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Denmark, Sweden Hold 4 Terrorist Attack Suspects in Custody


Head of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service Jakob Scharf talks to the media during a press conference in Copenhagen, 29 Dec 2010
Head of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service Jakob Scharf talks to the media during a press conference in Copenhagen, 29 Dec 2010

Danish and Swedish courts on Thursday ordered a total of four people held in custody for allegedly planning a "Mumbai-style" terrorist attack on a Copenhagen newspaper.

Three are being held in Denmark and a fourth suspect is being held in Stockholm, Sweden.

Intelligence forces from the two countries coordinated to arrest the men before they carried out a plan that authorities described would have been mass murder in the offices of the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

The detainees in Denmark, a Tunisian and two Swedes, are accused of plotting to kill as many people as possible in an attack on the Copenhagen offices of the newspaper, which angered some in the Muslim world for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

A Danish official said all three had crossed from Sweden into Denmark late Tuesday night. They were arrested Wednesday.

One of the four suspects arrested in Denmark, an Iraqi asylum seeker, was released Thursday.

Danish intelligence chief Jakob Scharf said Wednesday the men were planning a "Mumbai-style attack", referring to the 2008 assault in Mumbai by 10 heavily armed militants that left 166 people dead.

Jyllands-Posten 's 2005 publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad enraged many Muslims, resulting in several attempts to attack both the publication and the cartoonist.

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