1 suspect in Denmark terror case released, 3 held

[December 30, 2010]  COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) -- An Iraqi asylum seeker accused of plotting a shooting attack on the Copenhagen office of a newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad was freed Thursday due to an apparent lack of evidence.

Three other suspects, who are residents in Sweden, were ordered to remain in custody for four weeks by a Danish court.

The group had been planning a shooting spree in the building where the Jyllands-Posten newspaper has its Copenhagen newsdesk, officials said.

Jakob Scharf, head of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service Scharf, described some of the suspects as "militant Islamists with relations to international terror networks." He said more arrests were possible.

Scharf said the assault was to have been carried out sometime before this weekend, and could have been similar to the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, that left 166 people dead.

In Sweden, police on Wednesday arrested a 37-year-old Swedish citizen of Tunisian origin living in Sweden, suspected of being linked to the plot. He was to face a custody hearing later Thursday in Stockholm.

A Danish intelligence official told The Associated Press that the released Iraqi man arrested in Denmark remains a suspect. The official gave no other details and spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

The Iraqi suspect's younger brother said he had been released and was at home with his parents.

"My brother is innocent. He is being called a terrorist because he is a devout Muslim," Farooq Muhammed Salman told the AP. "I know that my brother has nothing to do with this."

Salman said his brother, who suffers from various ailments, rarely leaves the apartment where he lives with his parents.

Under a court order, none of the suspects held in Denmark can be named. Police said they were Swedish residents -- a 44-year-old Tunisian, a 29-year-old Lebanese-born man and a 30-year-old whose national origin was not released.

The men face preliminary charges of attempting to carry out an act of terrorism and possession of illegal weapons. The men pleaded not guilty and refused to speak in the closed-door hearing at the Glostrup City Court in the Danish capital.

Preliminary charges are a step short of formal charges, but if they are formally filed and they are convicted they could face life sentences.

Officials said the men arrived by car in Denmark late Tuesday or early Wednesday from Stockholm. Police, who had been watching the group's movements for two months, followed the vehicle and arrested them Wednesday as they left an apartment in a Copenhagen suburb.

The arrests brought renewed attention to simmering anger at the newspaper, which has been the target of several attacks and threats since publishing cartoons of Muhammad in 2005, in what it called a challenge to perceived self-censorship.

There have been several attempts or plots to attack Jyllands-Posten or Kurt Westergaard, the artist who drew the most contentious of 12 cartoons.

Police didn't visibly increase patrolling on the streets of Copenhagen.

"We have found no reason to change anything in relation to our preparedness," Copenhagen police spokesman Rasmus Skovsgaard told the AP.

[Associated Press; By JAN M. OLSEN]

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