Denmark terror plot foiled
Building with newsroom alleged target
COPENHAGEN, Denmark – Police in Denmark and Sweden said they thwarted a terrorist attack possibly hours before it was to begin Wednesday, arresting five men they say planned to shoot as many people as possible in a Copenhagen building housing the newsroom of a paper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Four suspects were arrested in the suburbs of Copenhagen, including a Tunisian, a man from Lebanon and an Iraqi asylum-seeker. A fifth suspect, a Swedish citizen of Tunisian origin, was arrested in Sweden. The Danish intelligence service said it seized a submachine gun, a silencer and ammunition.
“An imminent terror attack has been foiled,” said Jakob Scharf, head of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service, or PET. Scharf said three of the men were arrested as they left a suburban Copenhagen apartment, “either heading out to carry out the terror attack or to do some kind of reconnaissance.”
Scharf described some of the suspects as “militant Islamists with relations to international terror networks.” He said more arrests were possible.
Authorities said the arrests followed months of surveillance.
Danish intelligence said the group had been planning to enter the building where the Jyllands-Posten daily has its Copenhagen newsdesk and “to kill as many of the people present as possible.”
Scharf said the assault was to have been carried out sometime before this weekend, and could have been similar to the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, that left 166 people dead.
“It is our assessment that the plan was to try to get access” to the newspaper office and “carry out a Mumbai-style attack,” Scharf told reporters.
Danish Justice Minister Lars Barfoed said the plot was “terrifying” and “probably the most serious terror attempt in Denmark.”
Danish intelligence said it arrested a 26-year-old Iraqi asylum-seeker living in Copenhagen and the three Swedish residents who had rented the car: a 44-year-old Tunisian, a 29-year-old Lebanese-born man and a 30-year-old whose national origin was not immediately released. The Danish resident was arrested in a separate raid, in a different Copenhagen suburb, from the other three, Scharf said.
The four men face preliminary charges of attempting to carry out an act of terrorism. A custody hearing was scheduled for today.
In Sweden, police said they arrested a 37-year-old Swedish citizen of Tunisian origin living in Stockholm.
The alleged plot follows several attacks and threats connected to 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad published by the Jyllands-Posten in 2005 as a challenge to perceived self-censorship. The cartoons also provoked massive and violent protests in early 2006 in Muslim countries after the drawings were reprinted in a range of Western media. Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.