Copenhagen, Apr 14: Four terrorists with links to Pakistan had planned a Mumbai style attack to target Danish Crown Prince Frederik as part of their planned revenge attack on a newspaper that printed cartoons of Prophet Mohammed, a court here was told on Friday.
The suspects, Mounir Ben Mohammed Dahri, Zalouti, Munir Awad and Omar Abdalla Aboelazm intended to attack the offices of the newspaper Politiken in a Mumbai-style terror attack in December 2010 when the crown prince was handing out awards, the prosecutor told the court.
The men were arrested on their way to the ceremony which eventually took place at the paper as planned.
The four men - three Danish citizens and one resident of Sweden - have been accused of terrorism and illegal possession of weapons. The lawyer for the accused says, they would plead guilty to having weapons but would deny the terror charge.
Prosecutor Henrik Plaehn said the terrorists were linked with Pakistan, a point he would try to prove during the trial.
Surrounded by heavily armed police, the four defendants were led in handcuffs into the media-packed courtroom just outside Copenhagen, the Danish capital, where they were accused of terrorism and illegal possession of weapons.
A lawyer for one of the accused, Mounir Ben Mohamed Dhahri, said today before the trial that his client would plead guilty to having weapons but would deny the terrorism charge.
Three of the four accused were arrested in December 2010 while they were allegedly on their way to carry out Mumbai-style shooting at the Jyllands-Posten newspaper that published 12 cartoons of the prophet in 2005.
The fourth defendant, Sabhi Ben Mohamed Zalouti, left the car while it was en route and returned to Stockholm, where he was arrested the same day as the others.
Surrounded by heavily armed police, the four men were led in handcuffs into the media-packed courtroom just outside the capital of Copenhagen.
The men - - could face 16 years in prison if found guilty, while prosecutors are expected to ask that the men be deported from Denmark after serving their sentence.
Awad, Aboelazm and Zalouti are likely to plead not guilty to both the terrorism and weapons accusations.
Swedish security police had been monitoring the group for months. After the arrest, Danish security officials described the men as ‘militant Islamists with relations to international terror networks.'
News of the group's alleged attack plans sent a tremor through the largely peaceful Danish society, which is attempting to lay to rest the 2005 cartoon debacle.
The trial will last approximately two months, with a verdict expected in mid-June.
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