Suspect in Mumbai-style attack plot released

Copenhagen: An Iraqi asylum seeker accused of plotting a shooting attack on the Copenhagen office of a newspaper that published offensive cartoons that angered Muslims was freed yesterday due to an apparent lack of evidence.

Three other suspects, residents of Sweden, were ordered to remain in custody for four weeks by a Danish court.

The four men were arrested in the Danish capital on Wednesday, while police in Stockholm arrested a Swedish citizen of Tunisian origin, suspected of being linked to the plot.

Danish and Swedish police said the group, which they had been observing for months, planned a shooting spree in the building where the Jyllands-Posten newspaper has its Copenhagen newsdesk.

More arrests

Jakob Scharf, head of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service Scharf, described some of the suspects as "militant with relations to international terror networks". He said more arrests were possible.

Scharf said the assault was to have been carried out before this weekend, and could have been similar in strategy to the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, that left 166 people dead

The latest arrests brought renewed attention to simmering anger at the newspaper, which has been the target of several attacks and threats since publishing 12 cartoons in 2005.

Kurt Westergaard, the artist who drew the most controversial of the cartoons has also been attacked and threatened.

The cartoons turned this small Scandinavian nation into a target of Islamist groups seeking to carry out terror attacks and prompted violent anti-Danish protests in Muslim countries in 2006.

Under a court order, none of the suspects held in Denmark can be named.