Five People Arrested In Denmark Terror Probe
3:10pm UK, Wednesday December 29, 2010
Hugh Westbrook, Sky News Online
Five people suspected of planning a terror attack against a newspaper that printed controversial cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed have been arrested.
Four of the men were arrested in Denmark and one in Sweden.
Danish and Swedish authorities said they had worked together to stop the planned attack on the headquarters of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.
The Danish Intelligence Agency PET said that three of the four men it arrested were Swedish residents who entered the country on Tuesday night.
It identified them as a 44-year-old Tunisian citizen, a 29-year-old Lebanese-born man and a 30-year-old Swedish resident whose origin was not immediately known.
The fourth suspect was a 26-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker living in Copenhagen, while the man arrested in Stockholm was described as a 37-year-old Swede of Tunisian background.
Jacob Scharf, head of PET, said the arrests had stopped "an imminent terror attack", adding that the suspects had allegedly planned to "kill as many people as possible".
He said that several of the suspects could be described "as militant Islamists with connections to international terror networks".
The arrests are the latest terrorism-related incident in Scandinavia and come two weeks after a man blew himself up in the Swedish capital Stockholm.
Officials said there was no "known connection" between the December 11 incident and the latest arrests.
The 12 Jyllands-Posten cartoons, which were published in 2005, provoked protests across the Muslim world, while there were also protests in Britain.
There were also threats made against one of the cartoonists.
_Attack_On_Prophet_Moham med_Cartoon_Newspaper" class="bbc_link" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Denmark-Terror-Arrests-Four-Held-Over-Possible-Attack-On-Prophet-Mohammed-Cartoon-Newspaper/Article/201012415874198?lpos=World_News_Carousel_Region_1&lid=ARTICLE_15874198_Denmark_Terror_Arrests:_Four_Held_Over_Possible _Attack_On_Prophet_Moham med_Cartoon_NewspaperMy, my, the "extremists" have been quite busy this holiday season.
