Police called over Danish exhibit on Brussels, Paris bombers

COPENHAGEN: A Copenhagen art show was reported to police on Monday on allegations of encouraging terrorism for plans to portray suicide bombers killed in the Brussels and Paris attacks as heroes.
A Danish group of artists plans to include brothers Ibrahim and Khalid El-Bakraoui, who detonated bombs in the deadly Brussels attacks in March, in the controversial show.
Foued Mohamed-Aggad, who blew himself up at Paris music venue Bataclan in November, is also to be in the exhibition partly inspired by Tehran's Martyrs' Museum to people killed in Iran's Islamic revolution and war with Iraq.
The installation will have the look of a museum, using images of the bombers, replicas of their belongings and plaques to explain who they were.
A local member of Denmark's ruling Venstre party, Diego Gugliotta, on Monday reported the event and its organisers to police for "encouraging terror".
Portraying international terrorists as heroes could push some people to "take the last step and join a terror organisation," he wrote on Facebook.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for both the Paris attacks, which left 130 people dead, and the Brussels bombings, which killed 32.
The Islamic State attackers will be featured in the installation alongside historical figures considered to have died for their cause, such as French heroine Joan of Arc and Greek philosopher Socrates, said Ida Grarup Nielsen of artist collective The Other Eye of The Tiger.
"Our exhibit is really about describing the term 'martyr' from as many different angles as possible and through history," Nielsen said.
Everyone is "the hero of (their) own story," she added.
The exhibit is scheduled to go on display from May 26 until June 10 in a former abattoir in Copenhagen's trendy Meatpacking District.
The venue is home to a theatre group whose artistic leader, Christian Lollike, courted controversy in 2012 by staging a play based on the manifesto of Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik. — AFP