COPENHAGEN: Danish police have arrested “some 20 people” suspected of involvement in extremist terrorism in a series of raids across the country, authorities said Wednesday.
Flemming Drejer, the operative head of the Denmark’s Security and Intelligence Service, said the suspects were “driven by a militant, Islamist motive.”
Copenhagen Police Chief Inspector Joergen Bergen Skov said some of them would be charged under the Scandinavian country’s terror laws on Thursday behind closed doors.
“Some had have procured things to make explosives and have tried to acquire weapons,” Bergen Skov told a joint press conference with the domestic intelligence service.
Drejer, the intelligence chief, said the arrests won’t change Denmark’s terror threat assessment, which “remains serious.”
“We look with great severity on a case like this one because it unfortunately confirms that there are people that have the intention and capacity to commit terror (attacks) in Denmark,” Drejer said.
Bergen Skov said police raided about 20 addresses in Denmark and six police departments across the country were involved. The raids and arrests were coordinated by the Copenhagen police.
No details were given as to what the target was or when an attack would take place.
Danish authorities have reported foiling several extremist attacks in recent years, including ones linked to the 2005 publication in a newspaper of 12 cartoons by various artists depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
A Danish court earlier this year gave a Syrian asylum seeker in Sweden a 12-year prison sentence for planning to explode one or more bombs in Copenhagen and stabbing random people with kitchen knives. Moyed Al Zoebi, 32, acted on behalf of the Daesh group, according to the Copenhagen City Court.
Al Zoebi had an accomplice, Dieab Khadigah, who was sentenced in Germany in July 2017 to a prison term of six-and-a-half years.
On Feb. 14, 2015, lone gunman Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein killed two people in separate shootings in Copenhagen, before being shot dead by police.
Denmark: Police foil suspected extremist terror attack plans
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Denmark: Police foil suspected extremist terror attack plans
- Police did not give an exact number for the arrests
- “We now have the situation under control.”, said chief of police Skov
Blair pressured UK officials over case against soldiers implicated in death of Iraqi
- Newly released files suggest ex-PM took steps to ensure cases were not heard in civilian court
- Baha Mousa died in British custody in 2003 after numerous assaults by soldiers over 36 hours
LONDON: Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair pressured officials not to let British soldiers be tried in civil courts on charges related to the death of an Iraqi man in 2003, The Guardian reported on Tuesday.
Baha Mousa died in British Army custody in Basra during the Iraq War, having been repeatedly assaulted by soldiers over a 36-hour period.
Newly released files show that in 2005 Antony Phillipson, Blair’s private secretary for foreign affairs, had written to the prime minister saying the soldiers involved would be court-martialed, but “if the (attorney general) felt that the case were better dealt with in a civil court he could direct accordingly.”
The memo sent to Blair was included in a series of files released to the National Archives in London this week. At the top of the memo, he wrote: “It must not (happen)!”
In other released files, Phillipson told Blair that the attorney general and Ministry of Defence could give details on changes to the law they were proposing at the time so as to avoid claims that British soldiers could not operate in a war zone for fear of prosecution.
In response, Blair said: “We have, in effect, to be in a position where (the) ICC (International Criminal Court) is not involved and neither is CPS (Crown Prosecution Service). That is essential. This has been woefully handled by the MoD.”
In 2005, Cpl Donald Payne was court-martialed, jailed for a year and dismissed from the army for his role in mistreating prisoners in custody, one of whom had been Mousa.
Payne repeatedly assaulted, restrained and hooded detainees, including as part of what he called “the choir,” a process by which he would kick and punch prisoners at intervals so that they made noise he called “music.”
He became the first British soldier convicted of war crimes, admitting to inhumanely treating civilians in violation of the 2001 International Criminal Court Act.
