Two jailed for newspaper terror plot

Wednesday, 01 February 2012 10:45

Written by Editor

A Norwegian court on Monday convicted two men of planning to attack Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten after it printed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Mikael Davud, a Norwegian from China's ethnic Uighur minority who had links to al-Qaeda, was jailed for seven years. An Iraqi Kurd, Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak (pictured), was given three-and-a-half years. Another man, David Jakobsen, was cleared of terror charges. The judge said that Davud "had planned the attack together with al-Qaeda". The convictions were the first under Norway's anti-terrorism legislation.

The three men, arrested in July 2010, had denied the charges, although Davud had admitted he was planning to attack Chinese interests in Norway because of the treatment of ethnic Uighurs. Prosecutors said that Davud had learned about explosives at an al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan and, together with Bujak, had planned to use them against the Danish newspaper. It was also claimed they had intended to kill Kurt Westergaard, who drew some of the cartoons.