Former Minister of Justice Ole Espersen (S) is dead – 85 years old. It appears from words of remembrance in Bornholms Tidende written by the former mayor of Copenhagen Frank Jensen (S).
Espersen has slept quietly on Friday in Rønne, and the funeral will take place in silence, his family writes in an obituary in Bornholms Tidende on Saturday.
Ole Espersen came to the Folketing in the constituency election in 1973 from the Brønshøj constituency for the Social Democrats, a constituency he represented for two decades.
The election ended with the Liberal government under Poul Hartling. In 1975, the Social Democrats – led by Anker Jørgensen – regained power and formed a government.
Six years later, in January 1981, Ole Espersen was appointed Minister of Justice in Anker Jørgensen’s fourth government, when Minister of the Interior and Justice Henning Rasmussen wanted to relinquish his last title.
The appointment came even though the Police Intelligence Service (PET) advised against Anker Jørgensen to do so.
But the then Social Democratic prime minister failed to follow the warnings, and therefore Ole Espersen reached almost two years as Minister of Justice, before the Social Democrats in September 1982 had to hand over government power to Poul Schlüter’s (K) first government.
The reason for PET’s skepticism was that Ole Espersen had met Soviet diplomats.
– It was an attempt to discredit me from someone who did not like to have me as minister, Ole Espersen has stated in connection with his 80th birthday in 2014.
As Minister of Justice, Ole Espersen was at the forefront of, among other things, legislation against television surveillance in public spaces and a reduction in the penalty for enrichment crime.
Ole Mogens Espersen was born in Nylars on Bornholm and in 1959 completed his master’s degree in law at the University of Copenhagen. Subsequently, he was employed by the Ministry of Justice, before in 1971 he became professor of state administration law at the University of Copenhagen.
Here he later returned as a professor of international law, after his time as a member of the Folketing in 1994 had ended after 21 years.
Ole Espersen became Commissioner for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights at the Baltic Council, and he was also chairman of the Danish Helsinki Committee for Human Rights.
He was also chairman of the then Radio Council on two occasions and has served in the European Parliament from 1974-1977.