Global Terror:Denmark

Mumbai-style terror attack foiled in Denmark

CNN
Posted on Dec 30, 2010 at 10:42am IST

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Copenhagen: The Danish police believe the five suspects were planning a massacre at the Copenhagen offices of Jyllands-Posten - the Danish newspaper that had published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad back in 2005.

Four men were arrested in Denmark, the fifth was arrested in Sweden in connection with the same plot.

The police believe the attack was being planned within the next few days. They found a machine gun with a silencer and ammunition on them.

Jakob Scharf, the director general of the Danish intelligence agency said that links to David Headley cannot be ruled out.

"We can't rule out the link with Headley. It is our assessment that the plans were to try to get access to the location where the Danish newspaper, which is partially situated in Copenhagen and try to carry out a Mumbai style attack on that location said Scharf.

Danish intelligence said the four men arrested in Denmark, in the Herlev and Greve suburbs of Copenhagen, were a 44-year-old Tunisian, a 29-year-old Swede born in Lebanon, a 30-year-old Swede and a 26-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker.

They were planning an attack "within the next few days", the agency said in a statement.

In an email to Danish news agency Ritzau, Danish Justice Minister Lars Barfoed said the arrests prevented what could have been the most serious attack to ever occur in Denmark.

Police said that the suspects had planned to enter a the office block. Three of those detained are Swedish citizens. Four were arrested in Denmark and one in Sweden.

Police in Denmark thwarted a terrorist attack on a building in Copenhagen which houses the newsroom of daily Jyllands-Posten that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Jyllands-Posten was the newspaper that first published the cartoons, provoking protests against Danish and European interests in the Middle East, Africa and Asia in which at least 50 people died.

The Nordic region, and especially Denmark, attracted the ire of militant Islamists across the world after the 2005 cartoons. Sketches of the Prophet by Swedish artist Lars Vilks in 2007 sparked similar outrage, but did not prompt immediate violence.

Vilks has faced numerous death threats as well as an attempted arson attack on his home.

Police uncovered a plot last year to attack Jyllands-Posten, and in January the creator of the most controversial cartoon escaped an axe attack by a man with al Qaeda links. Last September, a man who was later found to have a map with the address of Jyllands-Posten's headquarters in the city of Aarhus set off a small explosion in a Copenhagen hotel.

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