Danish ISIS ‘sympathizer’ dies after drug raid shooting

A Danish man with alleged ties to a militant group died on Friday from gunshot injuries sustained during his arrest following a drug raid shooting in Copenhagen, a government agency said.

“The 25-year-old man ... died overnight in Rigshospitalet (hospital) from his injuries,” the Independent Police Complaints Authority said in a statement.

The agency is investigating the incident because police used their guns during the arrest.

Police have said the man, named by media as Mesa Hodzic, had links to radical group Millatu Ibrahim and that he sympathised with the ISIS group, but that there was no evidence that extremism had inspired the shooting at a drug raid late Wednesday.

During the operation in Christiania, a self-governing commune in the capital with a long history of openly trading drugs, the 25-year-old shot two police officers, critically injuring one of them, and one civilian.

The Bosnia and Herzegovina-born Dane sustained critical gunshot injuries during his arrest in a suburban area outside Copenhagen early Thursday.

The drug trade in Christiania, founded by hippie squatters in the 1970s, has since long been taken over by criminal gangs and residents on Friday tore down the open air stalls used by drug dealers, urging the public to stop buying drugs in the area.