Terrorists planning to attack Danish newspaper had links with British network

London, Jan 6(ANI): Suspected terrorists arrested on their way to launch a 26/11 Mumbai-style attack on a Danish newspaper reportedly had links with a network in Britain.

Police had detained three men on Wednesday on suspicion of planning an armed assault on the offices of Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper that outraged Muslims in 2005 with cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.

Danish security police chief Jakob Scharf had said that the arrests prevented an imminent attack aimed to kill as many as possible at the newspaper's offices.

He said the plotters were probably a militant Islamist group with links to international terrorist networks.

According to The Telegraph, the men are thought to have links with two men in Derby, England, who were part of a network run by Al-Qaeda mastermind Ilyas Kashmiri.

The Kashmiri network in Derby was uncovered by MI5 when David Coleman Headley, an American working with Kashmiri, travelled to Britain in August 2009 to meet two men who were to help him with an attack on the Danish newspaper.

They, in turn, sent him to meet a contact called "Farid" in Sweden, a businessman living in an apartment in central Stockholm, the paper said.

Farid apparently told Headley that he could not help because he was being "continuously watched", according to a later interrogation of Headley.

SAPO, Sweden's security service, had the men under survelliance when they crossed the Danish border on December 28 in a rented vehicle transporting the firearm.

The Danish security and intelligence service followed the alleged cell to an apartment in Copenhagen.

They were arrested as they went back to their car the following day.

The cartoons, published in 2005 in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, featured caricatures of the prophet, which are considered blasphemous by most Muslims and prompted anger and violent rioting in some Muslim countries. (ANI)