Bosnia-linked
Terror Plotters Plead Innocent In Denmark
COPENHAGEN (AP)--Four young Muslims pleaded innocent Wednesday to charges
they helped provide explosives for an alleged plot to blow up a target
in Europe.
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Bosnian Muslim with Swedish citizenship, Mirsad Bektasevic was planning
suicide attacks on "infidels" |
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The trial in Copenhagen was linked to a Bosnian case in which
two men are being tried on charges of planning an attack in the Balkan
nation or another European country. The case has also yielded arrests in
the U.K.
The four suspects in Denmark - Abdul Basit Abu-Lifa, Elias Ibn Hsain,
Imad Ali Jaloud and Adnan Avdic - are accused of helping the two main suspects
arrested in Sarajevo last year to secure explosives.
Bosnian authorities said they found a powerful homemade explosive device
built into a "suicide belt" when they raided a Sarajevo apartment in October
2005 and arrested Swedish national Mirsad Bektasevic and Abdulkadir Cesur,
a Turkish national living in Denmark.
Bektasevic and Cesur, who went on trial in July in Bosnia, also have
pleaded innocent.
Bosnian investigators say the network was planning to blow up a target
in a European country to force the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan
and Iraq.
At the start of the Danish trial, prosecutor Joergen Jensen said he
would present records of mobile phone conversations and Internet chats
that tied the four defendants to Cesur and Bektasevic, who was code-named
"Maximus."
"They agreed with Maximus and Cesur that (the latter two) should travel
to Bosnia to get hold of explosives," Jensen told the 12-member jury.
If convicted, the defendants, who are aged 17-21, could face life in
prison, although such sentences are commuted after 16 years under Danish
law.
December 06, 2006 05:47 ET (10:47 GMT)