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| Europe |
| Danish court jails three men for planning bombings |
| 2007-11-23 |
| COPENHAGEN (AFP) - - A Copenhagen court on Friday sentenced two suspected Islamist militants to 11 years in prison and a third to a four-year jail term for planning terrorist bombings in Denmark. The men were found guilty of acquiring chemicals and laboratory instruments to make triacetone triperoxide (TATP) explosives, often used by Islamist suicide bombers. TATP devices were used in the July 2005 London bombings. Mohammad Zaher, a 34-year-old Dane of Paleostinian origin, and Ahmed Khaldhahi, a 22-year-old Iraqi Kurd, were sentenced to 11 years each, while Abdallah Andersen, a 32-year-old Dane who converted to Islam, received a four-year sentence. Nothing sez danish like "abdullah andersen"... We sure live in multiculral times, at least in the West, I don't know of many saudis named Christen Sørensen Suleiman Al Ghamdi... The three had risked life in prison. A fourth man on trial, a 19-year-old Dane named Riad Anwar Daabas, was acquitted. "There is every indication that the group had concrete and serious discussions about three possible targets in Copenhagen: the city hall square, the parliament and political meeting (areas)," prosecutor Charlotte Alsing Juul said Friday, insisting the plans "endangered state security." She had called for the men to be sentenced to between 10 and 14 years behind bars. The four men on trial, who frequented a mosque known for its radical interpretations of Islam, were part of a group of nine arrested in a September 2006 swoop in Odense in central Denmark. Six of them were released, including Daabas, while the three others have been held in custody since then. The Danish intelligence agency PET revealed in April that a Dane identified only as Lars had infiltrated the group to obtain information. PET had paid the man 84,000 kroner (11,750 euros, 16,700 dollars) for the information. Lars, 33, who had converted to Islam and went by the name Youssouf, was a former municipal employee who wrote the intelligence agency an email in December 2005 stating that he had met radical Muslims at the Odense mosque. The agency considered him credible and he was hired as an informant and equipped with hidden microphones and recording materials, according to Lars's testimony. The defence argued that Lars had encouraged the group to do and say things they would not normally have done, and said he had bought and paid for the chemicals used to make explosives. Lars was considered an active member of the group, and helped identify potential targets, the defence lawyers said. Judge Folmer Theilmann however said Thursday that the court considered Lars a "credible" witness and a "good citizen". The trial was the second terrorism-related case held in Denmark. In the first case, which wound up in February, a Copenhagen jury found four young suspected Islamists guilty of planning terrorist attacks in Denmark or Europe. However, the judges overturned the decision and acquitted three of the four. Justice Minister Lene Espersen, acting on the recommendation of Denmark's prosecutor general, meanwhile ordered one of the acquitted to appear in a retrial with a new judge and jury. No date has been set for the retrial. |
| Posted by:anonymous5089 |