A court here convicted four men on Monday of planning a terror attack in December 2010 against the offices of a Danish newspaper. The four men, who denied the charges, were sentenced to 12 years in prison.
The planned attack was intended as revenge for the publication of 12 cartoons, many of them depicting the prophet Muhammad, in 2005, prosecutors said; Jyllands-Posten, the paper that published the cartoons, was the target.
After months of surveillance, Danish police arrested three of the four men — Mounir Dhahri, Munir Awad and Omar Aboelazm — at an apartment in a Copenhagen suburb on Dec. 29, 2010, and Swedish police arrested the fourth, Sahbi Zalouti, at his apartment in Stockholm later the same day.
The lead prosecutor in the case, Gyrithe Ulrich, told the court during the sentencing hearing that there was no doubt the four men were planning to kill a large number of people in the building housing the offices of Jyllands-Posten and another leading Danish newspaper, Politiken, in central Copenhagen that day. “We have a completely concrete target,” Ms. Ulrich said. “They had enough ammunition to at least shoot 122 people.”
During the trial, which began April 13, prosecutors presented recordings of wiretapped phone conversations from Mr. Zalouti’s apartment. “We could hear them planning the attack,” Ms. Ulrich said in an interview.
Prosecutors said they believed the four men received orders to mount the attack from militants in Pakistan, where Mr. Dhahri, a Tunisian citizen, spent considerable time in the two years before his arrest. “We think that the mission was assigned from Waziristan,” Ms. Ulrich said. The other three men are Swedish citizens.
The four men left Stockholm on the day before their arrest in a rental car, and were followed by Swedish Security Service officers, prosecutors said. Mr. Zalouti separated from the group in Sweden, and the others drove on toward Copenhagen; when they crossed into Denmark, Danish security agents took over the surveillance, following the men the apartment in Herlev, a Copenhagen suburb, where the men were arrested the next morning.
The police found a semiautomatic gun, 122 bullets and 200 plastic strips commonly used as makeshift handcuffs in the rented car, and a pistol in the apartment, Ms. Ulrich said.
Denmark has been the target of several attempted terror attacks since the cartoons were published, Ms. Ulrich, but this plot was the most serious. “This time we knew exactly when and where it was going to happen,” Ms. Ulrich said.
The planned attack was intended as revenge for the publication of 12 cartoons, many of them depicting the prophet Muhammad, in 2005, prosecutors said; Jyllands-Posten, the paper that published the cartoons, was the target.
After months of surveillance, Danish police arrested three of the four men — Mounir Dhahri, Munir Awad and Omar Aboelazm — at an apartment in a Copenhagen suburb on Dec. 29, 2010, and Swedish police arrested the fourth, Sahbi Zalouti, at his apartment in Stockholm later the same day.
The lead prosecutor in the case, Gyrithe Ulrich, told the court during the sentencing hearing that there was no doubt the four men were planning to kill a large number of people in the building housing the offices of Jyllands-Posten and another leading Danish newspaper, Politiken, in central Copenhagen that day. “We have a completely concrete target,” Ms. Ulrich said. “They had enough ammunition to at least shoot 122 people.”
During the trial, which began April 13, prosecutors presented recordings of wiretapped phone conversations from Mr. Zalouti’s apartment. “We could hear them planning the attack,” Ms. Ulrich said in an interview.
Prosecutors said they believed the four men received orders to mount the attack from militants in Pakistan, where Mr. Dhahri, a Tunisian citizen, spent considerable time in the two years before his arrest. “We think that the mission was assigned from Waziristan,” Ms. Ulrich said. The other three men are Swedish citizens.
The four men left Stockholm on the day before their arrest in a rental car, and were followed by Swedish Security Service officers, prosecutors said. Mr. Zalouti separated from the group in Sweden, and the others drove on toward Copenhagen; when they crossed into Denmark, Danish security agents took over the surveillance, following the men the apartment in Herlev, a Copenhagen suburb, where the men were arrested the next morning.
The police found a semiautomatic gun, 122 bullets and 200 plastic strips commonly used as makeshift handcuffs in the rented car, and a pistol in the apartment, Ms. Ulrich said.
Denmark has been the target of several attempted terror attacks since the cartoons were published, Ms. Ulrich, but this plot was the most serious. “This time we knew exactly when and where it was going to happen,” Ms. Ulrich said.
Source: NYTimes
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