COPENHAGEN: Scandinavian intelligence agencies Wednesday claimed they had foiled a “Mumbai-style” plot by extremists to massacre staff at a Danish newspaper which published blasphemous sketches of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Denmark's PET intelligence service said five suspects had been arrested, preventing an imminent assault on the Copenhagen offices of the Jyllands-Posten daily in which as many staff as possible would have been killed. Four men were arrested in Denmark while a spokeswoman for Swedish intelligence agency Saepo said a fifth was arrested in Sweden in connection with the same international plot. “It is our sense based on intelligence that this is a militant group with links to international terrorist networks,” PET head Jakob Scharf told reporters. They were planning an attack “within the next few days”, the agency said in a statement. Wednesday's arrests took place after a long investigation led in collaboration with Sweden's Saepo, PET said. The man arrested in Stockholm is a 37-year-old Swede of Tunisian background. Danish intelligence said the four men arrested in Denmark, in the Herlev and Greve suburbs of Copenhagen, were a 44-year-old Tunisian, a 29-year-old Swede born in Lebanon, a 30-year-old Swede and a 26-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker. The first three were all living in Sweden and traveled to Denmark overnight. According to Jyllands-Posten's online edition, they traveled in a car rented in the Stockholm suburb of Kista. Also at the Copenhagen press conference, Saepo head Anders Danielsson said the men based in Sweden had been under surveillance. He added Saepo knew there were weapons in the car used for the trip to Copenhagen. – Agence France
