COPENHAGEN — Three people arrested in Copenhagen on suspicion of plotting a terror attack were charged with violations of weapons laws and jailed for 26 days at a hearing Saturday, the Ekstra Bladet newspaper reported.
The three arrested — a 22-year-old Jordanian national, a 23-year-old Turkish national and a 21-year-old Danish citizen residing in Egypt — were arrested Friday and provisionally charged with illegal possession of automatic weapons and related ammunition. They were thought to be in the process of preparing a terrorist act.
The three were formally charged with illegal possession of weapons at their preliminary hearing Saturday, but they may face more charges, Dorit Borgaard of Copenhagen Police told the newspaper.
They must serve the first 12 days of their sentence in solitary confinement.
The arrests were made at two addresses in the Danish capital, and searches also were carried out at several locations within the city area, the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) said in a statement Friday.
It comes as four men are currently on trial in Denmark over a suspected terror plot to massacre the staff of a newspaper that first published controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Sahbi Ben Mohamed Zalouti, Munir Awad and Omar Abdalla Aboelazm — Swedish citizens of Tunisian, Lebanese and Moroccan origin, respectively — along with a Tunisian national living in Sweden, Mounir Ben Mohamed Dhahri, pleaded not guilty to charges of “attempted terrorism.”
Prosecutors say the four were plotting to “kill a large number of people” at the Jyllands-Posten daily’s offices in Copenhagen when they were arrested on Dec. 29, 2010. The newspaper published a dozen cartoons in 2005 of the Prophet Muhammad that triggered violent and sometimes deadly protests around the world.