Arrested in Copenhagen: 24 hours, and the preliminary hearing

What the arrest changes at home and at work

The most immediate change is a practical one: you are unreachable. A person held by the Danish police cannot answer a telephone, open an email or move money, and the people who depend on you will notice within hours. An employer expecting you at a meeting, a landlord awaiting a payment, a school that cannot reach a parent, all of them fill the silence with their own explanations.

For a traveller, the arrest breaks the journey. Flights, hotels and onward connections are lost, a rental car is left somewhere, and luggage, medication and a laptop may be in places you cannot reach. If you are in Denmark for work, a colleague may have to explain your absence without knowing what to say. Say as little as is true and as much as is needed: that you are delayed by a legal matter and a lawyer is dealing with it.

For a resident, there is a longer shadow. Employers can suspend staff pending the outcome. Banks and landlords sometimes react to a charge as if it were a finding. A professional licence, a security clearance or a position of trust can be affected even before a court has decided anything. Family members may need money at once, and a joint account or a signature that only you can give becomes a real difficulty.

Then there is the matter of your health and routine. Medication, dietary needs and anything you depend on every day have to be raised with the custody staff and with your lawyer early, in writing if possible. The arrest does not suspend any of these needs, and a request made late is harder to meet. Make a short list for the person who will speak for you, so that nothing important depends on memory.

Who arrives on this page after a call from Copenhagen

A relative has telephoned from a police station, or has not telephoned at all, and the family has only a few sentences: the name of a city, the word arrested, and perhaps a promise of more information later. You are reading this to learn what the next day looks like and who to call.

Another reader is the traveller himself or herself, released after a hearing or waiting for one, who has been told that a judge will decide between release, custody and extension and wants to understand what each of those words means before walking into the room. The proceedings are conducted in a language that may not be yours, with an interpreter whose quality you have no means to judge.

A further reader is someone who has been arrested in Denmark on a request from Italy, or who fears that an Italian warrant is behind the arrest. The European Arrest Warrant changes the route entirely, because the question is no longer only whether the Danish authorities can hold you but whether you can be sent to Italy, and by what procedure. People in this position often do not know whether they are being questioned about a Danish offence or an Italian one, and the difference governs everything that follows.

All of these readers need the same thing in the same order: to know what clock is running, who is entitled to speak for them, and what must not be said or signed in the meantime. This page is organised around those needs.

What to have in hand when someone speaks for you

Whoever is acting for you from outside needs paper and facts. Collect what you can without touching originals, and photograph rather than carry.

• Passport or identity card details, with a scan of the photo page, so that a lawyer can confirm who you are to the police and the court.
• The time and place of the arrest, with the name of the station or office if you know it. The clock runs from the moment of arrest, so the hour matters.
• Any paper the police gave you, in the original language, photographed whole. Do not rely on a verbal summary of it.
• The name of any interpreter or officer who spoke to you, and what was said about your rights.
• Whether you asked for a lawyer and when, and what you were told. This detail may matter later.
• Travel documents: tickets, hotel booking, rental agreement, the name of the company you came to see. They show purpose and ties.
• Details of Italian proceedings, if any exist: a summons, a prior investigation, a number or a name of an office. Whoever acts for you must know if Italy has an interest.
• Medical information and medication that custody staff must know about.
• Family and employer contacts, and who may speak to whom.

If something is missing, write that it is missing. A clear list of gaps lets a lawyer ask the right question on the first call.

Choices facing you in the next few hours

The initial choice is whether to answer questions before a lawyer is present. Police often present a conversation as routine. What you say is recorded, translated and held against what you later say. Waiting costs you the appearance of cooperation and may mean a longer wait at the station; answering costs you control over a statement that you cannot take back. If you decide to wait, say so plainly and calmly, in a single sentence, and do not argue the point.

The next choice is about the hearing before the judge. You can contest the grounds the police put forward, or you can accept a short period of custody to give the investigation time while your side is prepared. Contesting means a more demanding hearing and the risk that the judge, hearing arguments that were not prepared, extends the arrest. Accepting means you stay in custody longer than you might have. A local lawyer who has seen the file can tell you which is realistic; nobody else can.

A further choice concerns who speaks to the outside world. The embassy or consulate can be informed on request, and you can ask for a family member to be told. Telling too many people early produces confusion and rumours; telling nobody leaves people frightened. Name one person who will relay messages and give their details to the police and to your lawyer.

Lastly, decide how much of the case to share with the person who is looking after you at home. Keep the details of the allegation to the lawyers. Tell family the practical facts: where you are, that you have a defender and when the next step is due.

Behaviours that damage a defence

The following are the actions that most often make a difficult situation harder. The reasons matter as much as the rules.

• Do not sign any document you cannot read in a language you understand. A signature is read as acceptance.
• Do not explain yourself informally to cell mates, guards or acquaintances. Conversations are not confidential and may be reported.
• Do not use the telephone to discuss the case with relatives. Calls from custody may be monitored, and relatives may be questioned later.
• Do not post on social media or in group chats. A sentence meant to reassure friends becomes an exhibit.
• Do not delete messages, photographs or accounts on your phone or in the cloud. Removal reads as concealment.
• Do not contact witnesses or the person who made a complaint to apologise or settle. It may be taken as interference with the investigation, which is itself a ground for custody.
• Do not assume that a short interview means a short case. A relaxed tone from officers says nothing about what the prosecutor intends.
• Do not tell the court a story you cannot sustain. A change of account later is far more damaging than a measured silence now.

Each of these keeps open choices that would otherwise close within hours.

Questions worth putting to a lawyer about Danish custody

These are the questions that people outside the profession do not think to ask, and the answers shape the whole first week.

• Which court will hear the preliminary hearing, and have you or a local colleague seen the file before it begins?
• What grounds are the police putting forward, and which of them can we realistically challenge?
• If the judge extends the arrest, how long can it be extended and what is the plan for the next hearing?
• Is there any Italian proceeding or warrant connected to this, and would it change how we handle the hearing?
• Who is the interpreter, how was that person chosen, and can we ask for another if the translation seems poor?
• What restrictions on contact, letters and visits might be imposed, and how do I challenge them?
• Who coordinates between the Danish defender and an Italian lawyer, and who instructs whom?
• What will happen to my passport, phone and belongings while I wait?
• What should family say to my employer and bank, and what should they avoid saying?

A defender who explains each answer in plain words is also showing you how the case will be run. If you do not understand an answer, say so. Understanding is part of the service you are entitled to, and you should leave every conversation knowing what happens next and when.

When the case sits between Denmark and Italy

An arrest in Copenhagen often has an Italian side that the arrested person did not mention to anyone: a former residence, a company, a bank account, a family dispute, an earlier investigation. Danish officers may know about it before you do, because information moves between countries faster than people assume. Telling your lawyer everything at the start prevents surprises at the hearing.

Documents are the first practical obstacle. Anything issued in Italy, such as an employment letter, a residence certificate, a court paper or a medical record, will probably need translating into the language of the proceedings, and some will need a formal certification before a foreign court will accept them. Ask relatives to find originals now and to keep them safe, because the translation and certification take longer than the hearing allows.

Time differences are small, but the working day of a Danish court and the opening hours of an Italian office do not overlap perfectly, and a request made late in the afternoon in one country is often not handled until the next day in the other. The post between the countries is slow compared with the clock in a custody case, so important papers should travel by the fastest route and be sent as scans in parallel.

Coordination between defenders matters most. A Danish lawyer knows the court and the procedure; an Italian lawyer knows the Italian file and can say whether an Italian measure exists. They should speak early, agree on a single account of the facts and decide who handles each audience. The consulate can confirm your detention and pass messages, but it does not conduct the defence.

The terms you will meet on the documents

The papers you receive, or hear read aloud, use a small set of recurring expressions. These are the ones that appear on this page.

• Preliminary statutory hearing. The first appearance before a judge after arrest, which must happen within the Danish time limit. It is where the judge decides what happens to you next.
• Release. You leave, with or without conditions. Read the conditions carefully, since breaking them can produce a new arrest.
• Custody. You remain detained, on grounds the judge accepts, until the next decision or hearing.
• Extension. The judge allows the arrest to continue for a further period, which can be repeated where the evidence is not yet sufficient to decide.
• Grounds. The reasons the police or prosecutor give for holding you, such as a risk of jeopardising the investigation. They are the target of any challenge.
• European Arrest Warrant. A request between European countries to hand over a person for prosecution or a sentence, which follows a different track from an ordinary arrest in Denmark.
• Evidence not yet sufficient. The phrase police use to justify more time. It means they have not completed their case, not that they have concluded you are guilty.

Ask for any other word on the papers to be explained, and do not guess its meaning from a similar-sounding word in Italian or English.

How the studio takes on a Danish arrest

You can contact the studio by telephone or by email, using the details on this page, and the Rome, Milan and Naples offices are all able to take the call. Say who is arrested, in which city, when, and what papers exist. If the family cannot answer, send photographs of whatever has arrived and we will work from them.

The studio does not replace the Danish defender. A person arrested in Copenhagen needs a lawyer who can appear before the Danish court, and the studio works with correspondents there. Our role is to explain to the family and the person detained what is happening in Italian or English, to assess whether any Italian proceeding is involved, to coordinate with the Danish defender, and to prepare the Italian side of the file if a warrant or an investigation exists in Italy.

The appointment is in writing, signed by the person concerned or, where that is not possible, by a family member acting for them, and fees are explained before work starts. The first conversation is spent on facts: what happened, what paper exists, when the next hearing is. Send documents as clear scans, labelled and dated, and not as long unsorted chats. We are reachable outside office hours for urgent developments, because custody decisions arrive at any time, and we tell the family at each stage what has been done and what comes next.