Three people have been arrested in Denmark and another in the Netherlands during a joint operation on suspicion of conspiracy to commit a “terrorist act”, police and the Danish intelligence services (PET) announced on Thursday.
This is a situation that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office guarantees was part of a plan by Hamas to carry out a terrorist coup on European soil. In a statement, the Israeli government referred to the suspects detained by the Danish secret services for planning to attack civilians “in the name” of Hamas, and even spoke of seven suspects.
“This is a group that was preparing an act of terror. There are ties with foreign countries” and with organized crime, PET’s director of operations, Flemming Drejer, explained at a press conference, which did not confirm Netanyahu’s office’s version.
“It is a serious situation,” Drejer acknowledged, adding that the arrests were “carried out in close cooperation with foreign partners” and that the detainees were part of “a network.”
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen also called the situation “extremely serious”, in a statement released in Brussels, where the head of government is attending the European Union summit. “This shows the situation we are in in Denmark. Unfortunately,” he said.
In the Netherlands, NOS reported that a 57-year-old Dutch man was arrested in Rotterdam at the request of German authorities.
Danish police admitted they will increase their presence in Copenhagen, while guaranteeing the country’s capital remains “safe”.
No information has been released about the possible target of a terrorist attack.
It has been “several years since we could see that there are people living in Denmark who do not wish us well, who are against our democracy and our freedom and who are against Danish society,” Mette Frederiksen told the press.
Intelligence services consider the terrorist threat to be ‘critical’ and place it at level four out of five.
Denmark and neighboring Sweden were recently the target of outrage from Muslim countries when citizens in both countries desecrated the Quran.
In Iraq, for example, hundreds of supporters of influential religious leader Moqtada Sadr attempted to march on the Danish embassy in Baghdad in late July.
Denmark has since introduced legislation to ban the burning of Islam’s holy book, arguing that the measure aims to protect national security.
In 2006, following the publication of caricatures of Mohammed, a wave of anti-Danish violence spread across the Muslim world, leading to increased surveillance by intelligence services and police, who have since thwarted several planned attacks.
However, Copenhagen was the target of a ‘jihadist’ attack in February 2015, which appeared to be inspired by the attacks a month earlier in Paris on the weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Cacher store.
The author of this attack targeted a cultural center where a debate on freedom of expression was taking place and also the main synagogue in the capital of the Scandinavian country, but was shot dead by police.
A year ago, a Danish court sentenced an Islamic State sympathizer to 16 years in prison for planning a bomb attack, the harshest sentence handed down in Denmark in a case under anti-terrorism law.
The suspect pleaded not guilty, claiming that the 12 kilos of gunpowder and chemicals found hidden in his home were intended to make fireworks.
Earlier this month, European Union Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson believed that Europe is at “high risk of terrorist attacks” during the Christmas holidays due to the fallout from the war between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas.
Source: DN
