The Danish Security Service (PET) was in the process of monitoring a large Muslim network of terrorist suspects in the area of Aarus when they discovered that three people - two Tunisians and one Danish-Moroccan - according to PET, were busy planning to kill Jyllands-Posten's cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard.
According to Politiken's sources, the terrorist network had other and more advanced plans than to just attack the cartoonist. But when the plans to attack Westergaard became concrete, the three were arrested on Feb. 12th.
The Danish-Moroccan was freed a few hours after his arrest, but was told he will continue to be an object of interest for PET. On Wednesday the charges against him were dropped.
It's unclear whether more people participated in the murder plans, but PET had conducted so called 'preventive talks' with other network participants to make them aware that PET knew of their part in the network.
The existence of the network appeared in a statement by Jakob Scharf which was sent on June 4th ot the supreme court which handled the case of the arrest of the two Tunisians.
Scharf wrote that before the arrests PET had conducted observations and investigations regarding the two. Later the Danish-Moroccan was added as well.
The supreme court decided on July 2nd that the case should be decided by the Copenhagen court since PET hadn't formerly presented material on the background of their administrative deportation.
According to Politiken's sources, PET will present more materials then they did in the supreme court, among other about the terror networks and the suspicions against one of the Tunisians in particular.
This will be the second time that PET breaks with its usual practice of keeping its cards hidden on administrative deportation cases.
In Februar PET refused to give more information other than that the Tunisians were suspected of planning to murder Westergaard. The city court and national court approved their arrest without further data, but when the case got to the supreme court, the state's lawyer thought things weren't going to be as easy.
Therefore Scharf wrote the court that after a renewed examination of the present data, PET find that without neglecting state security further data can be presented for the ruling. This further information included telephone and computer taps and a search by the younger Tunisian. PET think that the older one was assigned a senior role.
Scharf stressed to the court that an 'important part' of PET's data on the two Tunisians was not included in the material due to concern about PET's sources and collaborators.
Dr. Jonas Christoffersen of Copenhagen University thinks this is remarkable. According to the alien law PET can keep its data secret from the terror suspects based on 'security' concerns. Now PET is giving out more information because PET thinks it's necessary that the two will continue to be held.
Christoffersen thinks that the law is too arbitrary and allows PET to decide at will whether things should be kept secret or not.
Source: Politiken (Danish)
No comments:
Post a Comment