Police arrest 3 individuals in Denmark, 1 within the Netherlands on suspicion of planning terror assaults

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Police arrested three individuals in coordinated actions throughout Denmark and one individual was detained within the Netherlands on suspicion of plotting to hold out “an act of terror,” authorities stated Thursday.

Danish officers have stopped in need of indicating what the suspected terror plots had been linked to aside from saying the arrests in Denmark had “threads abroad” and had been “related to criminal gangs,” singling out the banned, predominantly immigrant gang Loyal to Familia.

However, Flemming Drejer, the operative head of Denmark’s Security and Intelligence Service, identified by its acronym PET, cryptically stated Danish police had “a special focus” on Jewish establishments. He didn’t present extra particulars.

He stated that Denmark was not altering the phobia menace stage, which has been at “serious,” the second-highest stage, since 2010. In January that 12 months, a Danish court docket upheld a nationwide police ban on the gang, saying it must be dissolved as unlawful underneath Denmark’s structure.

The gang had been behind feuds, violence, robberies, extortion and drug gross sales within the Danish capital and “had used violence and illegal means to achieve its goal,” the Copenhagen District Court stated on the time. In September 2018, police in Denmark issued a short lived ban in opposition to the gang and stated anybody seen carrying its brand might face prosecution.

”Persons overseas have been charged,” Drejer stated. “It is a serious situation.”

Speaking in a press convention, he added the arrests had been “carried out in close collaboration with our foreign partners,” and stated these arrested had been a part of “a network.” He stated the suspects would face a custody listening to inside 24 hours, possible behind “double closed doors” – that means that he couldn’t give particulars concerning the case, any goal or motive.

“This is extremely serious ,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, talking from Brussels the place she was attending a European Union summit in Brussels. “It shows the situation we are in in Denmark. Unfortunately.”

“It is totally true when each (Denmark‘s intelligence agencies) say that there is a high risk in Denmark,” Frederiksen said. “It is of course completely unacceptable in relation to Israel and Gaza, that there is someone who takes a conflict somewhere else in the world into Danish society.”

In the Netherlands, authorities confirmed that a 57-year-old Dutch man was arrested in Rotterdam based on a request from German authorities, police spokesman Jesse Brobbel said.

On Tuesday, the Dutch counterterrorism agency raised the country’s menace alert to its second-highest stage, saying the opportunity of an assault within the nation is now “substantial.”

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s workplace stated that Denmark had arrested seven operatives who had been appearing on behalf of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, and thwarted an assault geared toward killing harmless residents on European soil.

The determine of seven arrests was completely different from the quantity offered by the Danes and the discrepancy couldn’t instantly be reconciled.

Netanyahu’s workplace stated Hamas, which has been labeled a terrorist group by the United States, the European Union and different Western nations, strives to hit targets world wide and in Europe particularly. The assertion added that Israel’s intelligence companies “will continue to operate … in order to repel the intentions of Hamas and eliminate its capabilities.”

Earlier this month, the European Union’s dwelling affairs commissioner, Ylva Johansson, warned that Europe confronted a “huge risk of terrorist attacks” over the Christmas vacation interval as a result of fallout from the preventing in Gaza.

Denmark’s overseas intelligence service, generally known as FE, stated Thursday in its annual evaluation for 2023 that “the war between Israel and Hamas has once again shown that unresolved conflicts in Europe’s immediate area can escalate rapidly and create widespread regional instability.”