Danish prosecutors on Friday charged four people with terrorism for allegedly planning a shooting attack on a newspaper that had printed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
The four men Swedes living in Denmark wanted to seriously frighten the population and destabilize Denmark by planning a shooting spree inside the Copenhagen offices of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, Svend Ulrik Larsen, Denmarks top prosecutor, said.
The paper published 12 cartoons of the prophet in 2005, sparking riots in Muslim countries and calls for revenge against the Danish publishers and cartoonists.
Larsen said the group traveled to Copenhagen with arms and ammunition, aiming to kill a larger number of people.
Swedish and Danish intelligence officials said they have followed the men for months and tailed the their hired car from Stockholm before arresting them at a flat near the Danish capital.
The Danish Security and Intelligence Service described some of the suspects as militant Islamists with relations to international terror networks.
This is a very serious case. We believe they wanted to attack the (Copenhagen) newsroom of the Jyllands-Posten daily, possibly because of the Muhammad cartoons, Gyrithe Ulrich, the prosecutor who handles the case, told The Associated Press.
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A court in Paris has sentenced three ex-members of a radical Palestinian group in absentia to 30 years in prison for an attack on a Greek cruise ship over two decades ago. Nine people were killed in the attack.
Three men were found guilty in absentia at a French anti-terrorism trial on Thursday for their role in an attack on a Greek cruise ship more than two decades ago. The men, who are suspected ex-members of the Palestinian group Abu Nidal, were each sentenced to 30 years in prison.
On July 11 1998, at least one gunman on the City of Poros cruise ship opened fire on passengers as the ship was returning to Athens after a one-day cruise, before throwing a grenade and a fire bomb. Nine people, including three French citizens, were killed and dozens more were injured.
"The message from this trial is that French justice never gives up on those who commit terrorist acts," the victims' lawyer Francis Szpiner said.
Lebanese-born Adnan Sojod was convicted of murder and attempted murder after being identified by some thirty witnesses as the main shooter. Meanwhile Abdul Hamid Amoud and Palestinian-born Jordanian national Samir Mohammed Ahmed Khaidir were convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to attempt murder.
New arrest warrants were issued for the men whose whereabouts remain unknown.
Until Thursday's ruling, no one had been convicted in connection with the attack.
Abu Nidal's faction is believed to have killed or wounded nearly 1,000 people in 20 countries in a string of attacks between 1970 and 1988. For years it was on the US State Department list of terrorist organizations.
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
