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A story in the Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet headlined “Lars Hedegaard moves” by Bo Poulsen, attempted to locate and publicize the new address for renowned Islam critic Lars Hedegaard, who survived an assassination attempt by a Muslim last month, and as a result, has been forced to change his residence.
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Frontpage Magazine Two Ekstra Bladet staffers were parked outside Hedegaard’s current residence where they were watching the moving men load the van, after which they followed it. In his article, Poulson actually describes the route taken by the van. If you plot the course of the van on Google Maps, to be sure, it looks rather meandering, as if the moving men were aware of the two reporters on their tail and were trying to shake them off.
trying to shake them off.
Fortunately, the police intervened. Perhaps the moving men alerted them to the problem. In any event, a motorcycle cop pulled over the reporters’ car. Poulsen is snide about it, describing the intervention sarcastically as belejligt – meaning “timely” or “convenient.” Poulsen is obviously indignant about the injustice of it all. “Without any justification, the driver was asked to show his driver’s license, even as they could see the moving van disappear over the horizon. After a few minutes the officer returned and said that everything was in order and that they could drive on.”
The reporters did so – but the cop followed close behind. After a short while he pulled them over a second time and “said in a not particularly convincing manner that he would like to see the driver’s license again, because ‘We can see that it’s been used in some connection or other, so we should double-check it.’” Another five minutes or so went by. Then the cop came back with the license, pronounced again that everything was in order, and told the reporters that they were free to continue on their way.
“The two stops,” Poulsen writes with what certainly reads like righteous indignation, “had now detained Ekstra Bladet‘s reporters for over ten minutes, and the distinctively green moving van was now far over the hills.” Breathtaking.
It’s plain as day that Poulsen and his colleague were fully prepared to follow that van all the way to its destination, take a picture, and print the address – which would, of course, have been exceedingly helpful to anyone planning to make a second attempt on Hedegaard’s life, and would utterly have defeated the entire purpose of his move.
The very idea of following that van with the intention of revealing Hedegaard’s new address is beyond vile. It is a profoundly mischievous and potentially deadly act. Yet Poulsen seems incapable of imagining that he is doing anything remotely inappropriate.
