Copenhagen locked down in police manhunt

DANISH police shut down all transport links to and from the island of Zealand, where Copenhagen is located, yesterday as part of a massive hunt for three men reportedly linked to a kidnapping.

“We have caught a vehicle that we think is the right one. There is, as mentioned, a suspicion of involvement in serious crime,” chief police inspector Jargen Bergen Skov told a press conference last night. He did not say whether its occupants had been arrested. The car was stolen from Malmo Airport as part of a suspected kidnapping.

Police closed the Oresund Bridge and Tunnel, the route between Denmark and Sweden featured in the hit crime series The Bridge, as well as the Great Belt Fixed Link crossing to the island of Funen, and all ferry connections to Sweden, Norway and Germany, as they searched for three men in a black Volvo.

“It is very unusual that we choose to do this, but the three persons are suspected of a serious crime,” Riad Tolba, a Copenhagen police spokesman said.

The island was cut off yesterday from 2pm until just before 4.30pm local time while police teams took up positions.

Hans Jorgen Bonnichsen, the former head of operations for Denmark’s PET security services, said he had never witnessed a manhunt on such a scale.