Iraqi immigrant involved in Danish cartoon vengeance claims innocence

An Iraqi immigrant accused of helping plot an attack against a newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad maintains he is innocent and was providing three other suspects with an apartment.

31 December 2010, 12:00am

2 min read

Abdullah Muhammed Salman was released a day after his arrest Wednesday due to an apparent lack of evidence, while the three men taken into custody with him remain in jail on charges attempting to carry out an act of terrorism and possession of illegal weapons.

Police said they found a submachine gun, a handgun and ammunition in raids and believe the men were plotting to open fire inside the Copenhagen offices of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which angered many Muslims by publishing 12 cartoons of Muhammad in 2005.

But Salman told the Ekstra Bladet newspaper that a Swedish acquaintance had asked him to find the apartment for a couple in Copenhagen. After arranging a sublet, Salman went to downtown Copenhagen to meet the couple, but instead found three men he had previously met only briefly at a mosque in Sweden waiting for him.

"I felt that I could not reject them and took them out to the apartment in Herlev," a Copenhagen suburb, where the three men were arrested. Salman was however arrested in his home in another suburb.

"I had no idea that they would make terror and I still do not believe it," Salman said. Under a court order, none of the suspects can be named, but Salman identified himself to the newspaper.

The other three suspects are residents of Sweden — a 44-year-old Tunisian, a 29-year-old Lebanese-born man and a 30-year-old whose national origin was not released.

Preliminary charges are a step short of formal charges, but if they are formally filed and convicted, they could face life sentences. They have pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The Danish Security and Intelligence Service, or PET, described some of the suspects as "militant Islamists with relations to international terror networks."

A fifth suspect was arrested in Stockholm on Wednesday. A day after, a Swedish court ordered Sahbi Zalouti, 37, held in detention on suspicion of helping prepare the terrorist attack. Zalouti, a Swedish citizen of Tunisian origin, denied the charges.

"I know I am innocent. I have not planned anything," Salman maintained. "I challenge PET. They cannot find anything on my computer, telephone or any place showing I was planning some kind of terror."