DENMARK
Police foil plot against Mohammad cartoon newspaper
Danish and Swedish police said Wednesday that five people had been arrested on suspicion of planning an attack on a Copenhagen building housing a newspaper that angered some Muslims in 2005 by printing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.
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REUTERS - Danish police arrested five people suspected of planning a Mumbai-style attack to kill as many people as possible in a building housing a Danish newspaper that outraged Muslims in 2005 with cartoons of Prophet Mohammad.
"It is our assessment that this is a militant Islamist group and they have links to international terrorist networks," Jakob Scharf, head of Denmark's PET security police, told a news conference on Wednesday.
Police found a machine gun with a silencer, ammunition and plastic strips that could be used as handcuffs in the attack that Scharf said was planned for Jan. 1.
The suspects had planned to enter a Copenhagen office block housing several newspapers including offices of the daily Jyllands-Posten to "kill as many as possible of those around".
"It is our assessment, based on our investigation, that the plans were to try to get access to the location where the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten is situated in Copenhagen and try to carry out a Mumbai-style attack on that location," Scharf said.
Many foreigners, some of India's wealthy business elite as well as poor commuters, were among the 166 people killed by 10 Pakistani gunmen in a three-day coordinated attack through some of Mumbai's landmarks, including two hotels and a Jewish centre.
Scharf said authorities could not rule out the possibility that the plotters may be linked to David Headley, a Chicago man who was arrested in October 2009 and pleaded guilty in March this year to scouting targets for the Mumbai attack.
Four of the five suspects were detained at flats in two Copenhagen suburbs, and one in Stockholm.
In Washington, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said: "We commend the work done by the Danish and Swedish authorities to disrupt this plot, and will continue to coordinate closely with them and our other European partners on all counterterrorism matters of common concern."
Stockholm attack
Jyllands-Posten was the newspaper that first published the Mohammad cartoons, provoking protests against Danish and European interests in the Middle East, Africa and Asia in which at least 50 people died.
Danish Justice Minister Lars Barfoed said those detained had a "militant Islamic background" and called the plan the most serious such attempt in Denmark so far.
Danish police detained a 44-year-old Tunisian national, a 29-year-old Swedish citizen born in Lebanon, a 30-year-old Swedish national, whose country of origin was unknown and a 26-year-old Iraqi asylum applicant, the PET said.
Simultaneously, Swedish authorities in Stockholm detained a 37-year-old Swedish citizen of Tunisian origin. All but the Iraqi were Swedish residents, it said. The suspects will be charged with attempted terrorism, PET said.
Swedish police began surveilling three of the suspects in Sweden before they entered Denmark on the night of Dec. 28, Denmark's PET and Sweden's security police SAPO said.
"Through extensive intelligence work we got information that there were individuals, persons in Sweden, planning terror actions in Denmark," SAPO chief Anders told the news conference. "We contacted our Danish colleagues and we decided to make a joint investigation."
Danielsson said that the Denmark plot did not have any known links to Dec. 11 bomb blasts in Stockholm.
"We have known for ... years that Sweden and the Scandinavian countries have not been safe havens, but countries where we know people have stayed and planned to commit terrorist crimes in other countries," Danielsson told Reuters.
The Nordic region, especially Denmark, attracted the rage of militant Islamists around the world after the 2005 cartoons.
Denmark has vociferously defended its civil liberties, and Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said that Wednesday's news must not lead Danes to "alter our open society and our values, especially democracy and freedom of expression."
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.
In Stockholm two weeks ago, a man blew himself up as he was preparing to set off bombs, possibly at a train station or a department store, according to police.
In that case an email -- thought to have come from the bomber -- was sent just before the attack, protesting against Vilks's sketches and Sweden's military presence in Afghanistan.
Both Denmark and Sweden have committed troops to U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan, while Danish soldiers were also stationed in Iraq after the U.S. invasion.
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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