Al-Qaeda planning Danish attack

2008-06-13 17:26

Copenhagen - Al-Qaeda is planning to carry out attacks on Danish soil, the head of the Scandinavian country's PET intelligence service warned in a newspaper interview ON Friday.

"We see now ... al-Qaeda behind a targeted training and planning of terror attacks on Danish soil," PET chief Jakob Scharf said in an interview with free daily Nyhedsavisen.

"Al-Qaeda has had, and still has, a strong wish to hurt Denmark and Danish interests," he added.

The terror network claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on the Danish embassy in Islamabad last week that killed six people, including two Pakistanis working at the mission and one Dane of Pakistani origin.

In an internet statement signed by one of al-Qaeda's leaders, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, the group said it had carried out the attack "in revenge" for Danish caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

Danish newspapers first published the controversial cartoons in 2005, sparking violent protests across the Muslim world. Several Danish dailies reprinted one of the sketches in February this year following the discovery of a plot to assassinate the cartoonist.

"We are keeping an eye on people and networks in Denmark who constitute a concrete threat and who have the will and the ability to carry out an attack," Scharf said, adding that PET was working to counter the threat.

In Sweden, the head of the Saepo intelligence service's counter-terrorism unit, Mats Paulsson, meanwhile told the TT news agency Friday that the agency was monitoring a number of people in the country suspected of travelling abroad for "terrorist training."

While these people were not believed to pose a great threat to their country of residence, they could quite possibly be planning attacks against neighbouring Denmark, Paulsson said.

- AFP