Rikke Hvilshøj

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Rikke Hvilshøj

Rikke Hvilshøj (born May 5, 1970) is a Danish politician representing the Liberal Party. She has been the Minister for Refugees, Immigrants and Integration in the Cabinet of Anders Fogh Rasmussen II since February 18, 2005. She has been a member of Folketinget since March 11, 1998.

[edit] 2005 arson attack

At 3am on June 8, 2005 somebody set her car, which was parked in a garage alongside the house, on fire. The car and a side of the house were burned, but the minister, her husband, and her two small children escaped unharmed. As of July 2005, no arrests have been made, and it is unclear who started the fire.

A young man was seen running away from the house, but the police have identified him and said he is not under suspicion [1].

An unknown group calling itself Aktionsgruppen Grænseløse Beate, The Actiongroup Borderless Beate ("Beate" is a name) has sent an email claiming responsibility, citing what it calls the government's "racist refugee politics" as the reason for the attack. The police say that the email was composed the day before the attack, on an Yahoo! Mail account in the Internet cafe Powerplay on Østerbro, Copenhagen.

At one point the police announced that they had the person who had composed the email in custody. However, the man later turned out to have a solid alibi documenting he could not have been at the internet cafe at the indicated time [2]. It was later reported that the employes who had pointed out the man had lied to cover internal affairs in the cafe, which they did not want the police to see (the news article is not explicit, but implies that the internal affairs they tried to hide are unrelated to the arson attack). The two men who lied have been charged with making false witness statements and risk going to jail [3].