Car Attacks in Denmark Spread ‘Like an Infection’

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/11/world/europe/copenhagen-demark-car-burning.html

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The arsonists appear to operate with little deference to class, equally at ease scorching a shiny new BMW or Mercedes as they are setting a battered old van ablaze.

And they almost always follow a pattern — smashing a window and dousing the interior of the vehicle with gasoline before setting it on fire.

At least 185 cars have been set ablaze in Copenhagen, the Danish capital, so far this year, the police say, with a sudden and mysterious increase over the past two months or so, when about 80 automobiles were burned.

Car burning has long been a potent and extreme example of urban revolt in some countries — France in 2005, in particular. But it is particularly jarring for Danes, who have long taken pride in their country’s social harmony and in being ranked among the happiest people on the planet.

“It is a mystery why this is happening, and there has been a big increase over the last few months and that is worrying,” said Jens Moller Jensen, a detective inspector with the Copenhagen police, charged with investigating the attacks. He said that he had expected a roughly 40 percent increase in car burnings this year compared with the previous year, and that the police had created a special unit to investigate them and had ratcheted up patrols. “I am working on several hypotheses,” he added.

The cars are always empty, so no one has been hurt or killed. In late September, the police arrested a 17-year-old male, but provided no further details.

As the motives and identities of the attackers remain a mystery, speculation is growing. Violent nihilism or rage? Immigrant angst? Simple boredom or, perhaps, large-scale insurance fraud?

One theory is that cars in Denmark are being burned by individuals from an angry underclass in a country where far-right groups have organized bitter protests against immigration, calling it a threat to the nation’s identity. The government has recently clamped down on migration, introducing a law requiring recently arrived asylum seekers to hand over valuables, like jewelry or gold, to help pay for their stay in the country.

“It is a bit like an infection that has spread,” said Frank Hvilsom, a crime reporter for Politiken, a leading Danish newspaper. “At a time when we have a toxic debate about immigration in this country and immigrants are being told, ‘You are not Danish,’ this could be the work of attention seekers who are trying to disturb society and are saying, ‘Let us show you what we can do.’ ”

Even after the Danish police arrested a 21-year-old man in August in relation to the arson, cars continued to burn. Mr. Moller Jensen said that both of the men who were arrested came from a working-class neighborhood in Amager, a Danish island. Playing down the idea that the burnings could be related to immigration, he said that one suspect was an ethnic Dane, while the other was not.

Mr. Moller Jensen said the car burning may have spread from neighboring Sweden, where more than 70 cars have been burned in the city of Malmo since early July. Dozens of cars have also been set on fire in Stockholm, and Goteborg, on the west coast of the country. Car burning has become such a scourge there that the Swedish authorities have turned to drones to try to catch the arsonists.

He said that he had his theories of what was behind the car fires, but that he did not want to undermine his investigation by divulging too much. “I’d be a bad cop if I put money on one of them,” he said.