COPENHAGEN: Three folks had been arrested in Denmark and one within the Netherlands on suspicion of making ready a terrorist assault, Danish police stated on Thursday (Dec 14), including the strikes adopted a coordinated cross-border police effort.
There was no phrase but on what the suspects’ motives had been or whether or not they had been associated to Islamist militancy or far-right teams. The Danish Safety and Intelligence Service PET stated in August that the menace in direction of Denmark had intensified after anti-Islam activists broken a number of copies of the Quran over the summer time.
“The investigation has revealed {that a} community of individuals has been making ready a terrorist act,” Flemming Drejer, PET chief superintendent, instructed a press briefing in Copenhagen.
“The arrests and the raids we’re finishing up at the moment are based mostly on an intensive investigation that PET has carried out in shut cooperation with our companions overseas,” he stated.
Dutch police stated a 57-year-old man was arrested in Rotterdam on Thursday on the request of German authorities in a Danish-German investigation.
The Dutch Nationwide Coordinator for Counter-terrorism and Safety (NCTV) this week raised the nation’s menace degree to 4, or “substantial” on its five-step scale, citing the battle between Israel and Hamas.
Danish police stated raids had been ongoing throughout the nation and had been carried out at an early stage of the investigation.
The community had hyperlinks to organised crime each in Denmark and overseas, together with to a gang named Loyal To Familia, or LTF, Dreyer stated, however declined to elaborate on attainable motives.
Police stated they might enhance their public presence in coming days, specifically in Copenhagen and round Jewish localities.
The Jewish Neighborhood in Denmark stated it had been briefed earlier than the general public concerning the raids however didn’t have any data about concrete threats to Jewish targets.
“That is extraordinarily critical,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen instructed information company Ritzau at a gathering with EU leaders in Brussels.
“It’s after all – in relation to Israel and Gaza – fully unacceptable for somebody to deliver a battle elsewhere on the earth into Danish society,” she stated.
“For numerous years now, now we have seen that there are folks residing in Denmark who don’t want us effectively. Who’re in opposition to our freedom and who’re in opposition to Danish society, with all that it entails,” Frederiksen stated.
PET has for greater than a decade warned in opposition to potential assaults. Police stated that they had saved unchanged their terrorist alert degree at 4 on a scale of 1-5, reflecting a “important” menace.
The three arrested in Denmark can be charged underneath the terrorism clause of the legal code and put in entrance of a decide for preliminary questioning, police stated.
