• Kurt Westergaard,  Muhammad Caricatures

    Norway Prosecutor Files Terrorism Charges Against Three in Attack on Danish Newspaper Jyllands-Posten and Mohammed Cartoonist Kurt Westergaard

    Offices of the Jyllands-Posten Newspaper which published the Mohammed Cartoons

    Remember the “Mumbai-Style” terror attack in late December 2010. Now, there is more.

    Mikael Davud, David Jakobsen and Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak are charged with planning to carry out an assault using explosives on Danish paper Jyllandsposten. The charges also say they planned to shoot Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, author of the controversial Prophet Mohammed caricatures.

    All the men were arrested last year in Oslo and Germany following a Police Security Service (PST) raid.  Authorities suspected they had planned to bomb the Chinese Embassy, with one of the three trying to obtain Hydrogen Peroxide from a pharmacy. This failed due to PST intervention.

    It is also believed the plotters are connected to al-Qaida, and the case has ties to the United States.

    The three men arrived in Norway between 1999 and 2002. Mr Davud and Bujak remain in custody while Mr Jakobsen, who served as an informant for the PST, has been released.

    None of the suspects admit their guilt, but face up to 12 years in prison if convicted.

    Here is more from the AP.

    The three men risk prison sentences of up to 12 years, Evanger said.

    Investigators believe the plot was linked to the same al-Qaeda planners behind 2009 schemes to blow up New York’s subway and a British shopping mall.

    An Associated Press investigation last year showed all three plots were thwarted after suspected operatives exchanged emails – sometimes poorly coded – in and out of Pakistan.

    Davud, a 40-year-old ethnic Uighur from China, was charged with receiving explosives training at an al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan and agreeing to blow up one of several offices of Jyllands-Posten in Denmark.

    Bujak and Jakobsen are accused of joining the plot in 2009 and helping acquire bomb-making chemicals.

    Police say they had the men under surveillance and even replaced a vital ingredient with a harmless liquid to ensure they would not succeed in building a bomb.

    Davud and Bujak, a 38-year-old Iraqi Kurd, were also charged with plotting to shoot Westergaard.

    Westergaard drew the most controversial of the 12 cartoons, featuring Mohammed with a lit fuse in his turban. He was the victim of a murder attempt last year and has received several death threats.

    Davud and Bujak have been held in custody since their arrest and have both admitted they were planning an attack, although their versions have differed on who their target was, the first saying it was the Chinese embassy in Oslo and the second claiming it was Jyllands-Posten.

    Jakobsen has denied any responsibility and is currently a free man. He became a police informant in November 2009 but still faced charges for his involvement in the plot before then.

    All three suspects deny any links to al-Qaeda.

    In Norway, plotting a terrorist act alone is not a crime. If at least two people are involved they can be convicted of conspiracy.

    The trial is set to begin on October 31.

    Here are the Mohammed cartoons:

     

  • Muhammad Caricatures

    Danish Free Speech Group to Sell Mohammed Cartoon

    Bomb in Turban Mohammed cartoon

    One of the Mohammed cartoons that sparked riots throughout the Muslim world

    Here we go again with the Mohammed Cartoons.

    A Danish press freedom group said Wednesday it is selling copies of a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad that caused outrage across the Muslim World.

    Some 1,000 printed reproductions of a drawing depicting the prophet wearing a bomb-shaped turban are being sold for $250 each, said Lars Hedegaard, chairman of the Danish Free Press Society.

    “All we are doing is starting a debate,” Hedegaard said. “We are using our freedom of speech.”

    Hedegaard said Danish artist Kurt Westergaard, who drew the cartoon in 2005, had given the society permission to produce the copies and sell them. Each numbered copy has been signed by Westergaard, Hedegaard said.

    “We have not, and are not, breaking any laws,” Hedegaard told The Associated Press.

    Westergaard has been living under police protection since an alleged plot to murder him was discovered last year.

    Twelve cartoons depicting the prophet, including the one by Westergaard, were published in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in 2005.

    The following year, they triggered massive protests from Morocco to Indonesia, with rioters torching Danish and other Western diplomatic missions. Some Muslim countries boycotted Danish products.

    Note, there has been NO publication of these cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in most of America’s mainstream newspapers.

    Flap wonders if there will be renewed rioting or Danish Embassy bombing since Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen distanced himself from the cartoons.

    Stay tuned…..


    Technorati Tags: ,

  • Muhammad Caricatures,  NATO

    The Non-Apology Yet Apology for the Mohammed Cartoons by Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen

    Mohammed Cartoons 625

    A summary display of the Mohammed cartoons that sparked riots throughout the Muslim world

    So, did the Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Secretary General of NATO apologize to the Muslim World for newspaper cartoons?

    You be the judge.

    Exit question: If he REALLY means to apologize why would he have NOT done so many months ago and spared his country grief from business boycotts and protests?


    Technorati Tags: , , ,

  • Al Qaeda,  Muhammad Caricatures,  Pakistan

    Mohammed Cartoon Watch: Car Bombing Outside Danish Embassy

    islm_cartoon_7

    One of the Mohammed cartoons that sparked riots last year throughout the Muslim world

    A car bombing of the Danish Embassy in Islamabad Pakistan is being linked to protests against the Mohammed Cartoons which rocked the world again earlier this year.

    A huge car bomb exploded outside the Danish Embassy in the Pakistani capital on Monday, killing at least five people and wounding dozens more, officials and witnesses said.

    The blast echoed through Islamabad and left a crater over a meter deep in the road in front of the main gate to the embassy. Glass, fallen masonry and dozens of wrecked vehicles littered the area. People, some bloodied, ran helter-skelter in a state of panic.

    There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri recently called for attacks on Danish targets in response to the publication of caricatures in Danish newspapers depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

    A perimeter wall of the embassy collapsed and its metal gate was blown inward but the embassy building itself remained intact.

    Officials at two hospitals reported at least five people – including two policemen – were killed and 32 wounded in the blast, none of them foreigners. It was the second targeting of foreigners in the usually tranquil Pakistani capital in less than three months.

    The Danish response is here.

    Note the car bomb killed native Pakistanis and NO foreigners.

    The Danish foreign ministry advised against travel to Pakistan and the Swedish and Norwegian Embassies have closed.

    What a shameful act of displaced and unreasoned radicalism of Islam.

    islamcartoonsbuy-danishweb

    Previous:

    Mohammed Cartoon Watch: 25,000 Pakistanis Protest Geert Wilder’s Fitna and Mohammed Cartoons

    Live Leak Pulls Geert Wilder’s Fitna After Being Threatened

    Mohammed Cartoon Watch: Osama bin Laden Issues Warning

    Mohammed Cartoon Watch: American Professor Fired in Bahrain

    Mohammed Cartoon Watch: Morocco – Cartoons Are “A Short Step from Terrorism”

    Mohammed Cartoon Watch: The Price of Notariety

    Mohammed Cartoon Watch: Sudan Urges Boycott of Denmark

    Mohammed Cartoon Watch: Solidarity with Denmark

    The Muhammad Caricature Watch Files