Three men suspected of planning a deadly attack on a Danish newspaper appeared today before a court which charged them with an attempted act of terrorism and possession of weapons, officials said.
Police detained four men in Denmark and one in Sweden yesterday on suspicion of plotting an assault on offices of Jyllands-Posten, the Danish daily that outraged Muslims in 2005 with cartoons of Prophet Muhammad.
The three - one Tunisian and two Swedish citizens - pleaded not-guilty to the charges, Lykke Sorensen, an official of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service PET, told reporters at Glostrup courthouse.
Yesterday, Danish security police chief Jakob Scharf had said that the arrests prevented an "imminent terror attack" that aimed "to kill as many as possible" of the people present at the Copenhagen offices of the newspaper.
Mr Scharf described the plot as a "Mumbai-style" attack, referring to the 2008 attack in the Indian city in which 10 Pakistani gunmen killed 166 people in a three-day coordinated raid on landmarks including two hotels and a Jewish centre.
Police brought the three suspects to a court in the Copenhagen suburb of Glostrup, which ordered that they be held in custody for four weeks pending more investigations.
"The three persons will now be held in custody for four weeks, of which the first two are in isolation," Sorensen said. "The investigation will continue in close cooperation between the police, the PET and (Swedish security police) SAPO."
A fourth man detained in Denmark, a 26-year-old Iraqi asylum-seeker, was released but remains a suspect though police did not have evidence to hold him further, Sorensen said.
The fifth detainee, a 37-year-old Swedish citizen, was scheduled to appear before a court in Sweden later on Thursday and was also expected to be remanded in custody, a Swedish court official said.
The men, who came to Denmark from Sweden on the night of December 28th, are suspected of plotting to attack by January 1st the office block on Copenhagen's city hall square that houses Jyllands-Posten and another newspaper, police said.
In connection with the arrests, police said they found plastic strips that could be used as handcuffs, a machine gun, a pistol and more than 100 cartridges.
Jyllands-Posten was the paper that first published the Mohammad cartoons in 2005, provoking violent protests against Danish and European interests in the Middle East, Africa and Asia in which at least 50 people died.
The furore sparked by those caricatures, including one of the Prophet with a turban resembling a bomb, has led to several plots on the paper, cartoonists and other journalists involved.
Zubair Hussain, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Denmark which represents more than 30,000 of the estimated 200,000 Muslims in the country, condemned the plotters' plans.
"As Danish Muslims, we feel it is important to say that this has nothing to do with Islam," he said. "We are all victims in this case. No one will ask before they blow something in the air, or before they shoot, 'are you Muslim or non-Muslim?'"
Reuters