The Word "Imam" used condescendingly by Danish top politicians

It is symptomatic of the islamophobic intellectual climate in Denmark that the word "imam" is being used condescendingly by Danish top politicians without their even thinking about it. These politicians would never dream of using the word "bishop" in the same way.

The Danish welfare debate is raging at full speed. Disagreement has broken out between socialdemocratic mayors in some of the largest cities and the conservative-liberalist government about the level of welfare spending and the distribution of expenses between the state and the municipalitities. Lars Lokke Rasmussen, home secretary and second in the political hierarchy under the PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has said about his political opponent, social democratic lord mayor of Aarhus Nicolai Wammen that the latter "talks equivocally like an imam". Anders Fogh Rasmussen has supported his second in command and said that the latter has put it "succinctly".

What they call back in memory is the journey to the Middle East by Danish imams that triggered the Mohammed cartoons crisis. It was said at the time that the imams "spoke with two tongues", one when in Denmark and defending Denmark, and with another tongue in the Middle East when defending the prophet against defamation. Whether this is correct or not, is not the point. It is not a generally recognised attribute of an imam to speak with two tongues.

These two politicians are role models for a large number of Danes. Therefore they ought to be careful not to spread more hate speech than that which is already around.

War Mongers' Narratives destroyed by Intelligence

BBC News has printed excerpts from the American Spy Agencies' National Intelligence Estimate on Trends in Global Terrorism released on Tuesday 26 September 2006. Below is an extract from the report:

We assess that the operational threat from self-radicalized cells will grow in importance to US counterterrorism efforts, particularly abroad but also in the Homeland. The jihadists regard Europe as an important venue for attacking Western interests. Extremist networks inside the extensive Muslim diasporas in Europe facilitate recruitment and staging for urban attacks, as illustrated by the 2004 Madrid and 2005 London bombings.

We assess that the Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives; perceived jihadist success there would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere.
The Iraq conflict has become the "cause celebre" for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement. Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight. We assess that the underlying factors fuelling the spread of the movement outweigh its vulnerabilities and are likely to do so for the duration of the timeframe of this estimate.
Four underlying factors are fuelling the spread of the jihadist movement: (1) Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness; (2) the Iraq .jihad;. (3) the slow pace of real and sustained economic, social, and political reforms in many Muslim majority nations; and (4) pervasive anti-US sentiment among most Muslims, all of which jihadists exploit.

All Danes should read this carefully. It is further evidence of the dangers inherent in the shift to the right of Danish foreign policy under the Conservative liberalist Fogh Rasmussen government. The Danish prime minister Fogh Rasmussen has denied the conclusions of the report, which is rather silly. It has led to questions from the People's socialist party (SF) and the Unity List in the Danish parliament. We're still waiting for the PM's answer. Anders Fogh Rasmussen must have some confidential knowledge that the intelligence agencies do not have.

This is not surprising, as it corresponds to the situation i 2003, before the outbreak of the Iraq war, when both the American president and the Danish PM disregarded intelligence reports on the true nature of Iraq's arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Political "necessity" takes priority to following the truth.

Time and again we've been hearing in Danish media about the threat the terrorists pose. This has been used by Anders Fogh Rasmussen as a justification for the Danish military involvement in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The foreign minister Per Stig Moller and the minister of Defence Soren Gade are in that respect simple replicas of their master. "We have to do this," Per S. Moller has said repeatedly. "Otherwise we'll regret it some day, when the terrorists come to haunt us." Therefore the terrorists have to be defeated militarily.

Now this turns out to be a perverse logic. The terrorists come about in the first place due to the war, - and due to the many humiliations Middle East populations have suffered because of colonialism and imperialism.

Danish Industrialists Worried about new Cartoons Crisis?

Pia having the rant party of a life time

When will this lady, perhaps the most powerful politician in Denmark, be invited as the guest of honour to the Industrialists' annual conference?

The chairman of the Conferation of Danish Industry, Henning Dyremose, may have sent out an invitation. We don't know.

What we do know is that he commented upon the Jyllandsposten Mohammed cartoons at the annual conference of the organisation on Tuesday. No wonder, these cartoons are still a top topic at meetings in the chattering classes.

According to Dyremose the cartoons case demonstrates that "an eye is kept on what is happening in Denmark. But not all Danes seem to appreciate this".

"When you have freedom of speech, you also have the right to remain silent, - if that is the wise option", Dyremose says to press agency Ritzau. "What The Jyllandsposten did - within the confines of Danish law - has a number of consequences that the paper may not have predicted. My point is that what we're doing in Denmark may have a global effect".

The chairman emphasises that he does not want to criticize The Jyllandsposten. But in his opinion we have to start thinking in a "global way" in Denmark. What we consider all right in Denmark, may be interpreted in an entirely different way in the rest of the world.

It is really amusing to see this top representative of Danish capital interests go out of his way to warn the Danes about not doing something that may jeopardize important economic interests.

Why doesn't he warn against The Jyllandsposten, in the 1930's a paper supporting the views of Danish nazis, and warn against the rampant xenophobic tendencies in parts of the Danish public? This xenophobia is expressed by the politicians from the right populist Danish Peoples Party, for instance the leader of the party Pia Kjaersgaard, who is pouring verbal abuse on immigrants almost daily.

Instead of doing this most obvious thing, Dyremose is beating around the bush for fear of getting his tail trapped in the xenophobic lady's virulent word stream.

Dyremose is the man who has just scored 100 mio. kroners (17 mio$) in personal benefits from selling the Danish tele communications giant TDC to foreign capital interests for more than 12 billion$. A new cartoons crisis may lower the price of the crown jewels of Danish business, so such generous deals may be more seldom in future. Freedom of speech is a good thing - no doubt about that, but it may come at a price.

The Affluent Society and its Enemies

Reclaim the Streets is alive and vibrant. The demonstrations for the Youth House in Copenhagen have been gaining momentum for several days. On Saturday some 3000 young people walked in demonstration from the Youth House in Nørrebro to Christiania. The house has been bought by the Christian sect the Fatherhouse, which has won legal right to evict the young people.

On Sunday the demonstrations evolved into a Reclaim the Streets action. The young anarchists who had got reinforcements from Germany (Die Autonome) and Sweden blocked the Dronning Louise Bridge to interior Copenhagen. Here they were met by numerous police. The police claim that the demonstration had not been notified, and therefore it would be considered illegal. Some demonstrators put on balaclavas, which has been illegal in Denmark since the demonstrations during the EU summit meeting in 2002.

The police succeeded in pressing the demonstrators back from the Queen Louise Bridge to Inner Norrebro, where street battles raged for some hours, and the police made some 260 arrests. Police have been accused of using too much violence during some of these arrests. Politicians from the Unit List (Red-Green Alliance) and social liberal Radicals have taken up the matter. They will pose question about the role of the police to Minister of Justice Lene Espersen.

Iraq War intensifies terrorism threat according to Intelligence Reports

According to the New York Times September 23rd US intelligence has spawned reports saying that the war in Iraq intensifies terrorism rather than alleviate it:

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.
The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.
An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.
The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.

This probably does not come as a surprise to most people. What is surprising is that this chain of causation has not reached the upper echelons of the White House yet. President Bush continues being involved in a great civilizational battle of the good forces against the evil forces, thus engaging the whold world in a kind of John Waine stage set that is getting more and more absurd.

The Danish secret service has also produced a report saying that the Iraq war - and Danish involvement in it - increases the threat of terrrorism in Denmark, rather than diminishing it. This has been denied by the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Yesterday a Danish soldier was killed by a wayside bomb. Fogh Rasmussen expressed great regret at this, and this is probably also how the Danish people feel. - But who is responsible for these meaningless deaths. Fogh Rasmussen called it an act of terrorism that ended the young soldier's life. It might also be called an act of national resistance against a foreign occupying force. In World War II Denmark was occupied by German forces. There was a resistance movement. They were called freedom fighters, not terrorists. Fogh Rasmussen has turned these historical events upside down, claiming that the Anglo-American-Danish forces in Iraq are freedom fighters, who fight against the post-fascism of the Baath party survivors. He is a kind of echo of his master, President Bush.

This perverse logic may be an act of stupidity. It is also possible that it is deliberate. If that is the case, it reveals a growing discrepancy between the stated ideals of the American nation, freedom and democracy, and reality. Bush claims to fight for freedom and democracy in the Middle East. What is meant is the freedom of American economic interests. What he is doing is trying to impose his own version of "freedom" on foreign peoples in these lands. We've heard this song before from men in power. It was the same thing the soviet rulers did, when they imposed the state-controlled centralised "people's democracies" on the countries in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1940s. They were not "democracies" in any reasonable sense of the word. Likewise, the "democracies" of Iraq and Afghanistan are not that in a reasonable sense of the word.

Stumbling over a cell phone - purely incidental?

One of the seven young men remanded in custody by Danish police in the Vollsmose terror case has been conducting cell phone talks from his supposedly isolated prison cell, The Fyens Stiftstidende writes today. According to the rules for remand in custody no contact to the outside world is permitted. Yet two of the 27 year old SH's brothers have spoken with him. This came out during a public meeting on Thursday night at a local Odense school. Here the two brothers told an audience that their brother found the cell phone when he was on exercise. He used the phone at once to get into contact with his family. The whole family have talked with him.

Together with the intelligence leaks (see previous posts) this incident has caused an uproar in Danish legal circles and the press. It has been suggested that the cell phone has been planted by the police.

If it has turned out to be difficult for the police to find sufficient hard evidence for convicting the terror suspects in court, they may have been tempted to use this stratagem to get more evidence. This was, however, denied by the police in the 9 0'clock radio news this morning.

Danish PM reinforces Alliance with right populist party

The political Right in Denmark which is presently running the government and having a comfortable majority in parliament is moving closer together. PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen's top lieutenant, the minister of employment Claus Hjort Frederiksen, tells daily journal Politiken today that the governing liberalist party Venstre has developed a "community of value" with the right populists in the Danish People's Party (DPP). It is the DPP with its "Denmark for Danes" policies that is largely responsible for the tough stance on immigration issues and the confrontations during the cartoons crisis.

The liberalist-conservative government depends on the votes of the DPP in order to have a majority in parliament. This makes Pia Kjaersgaard, leader of the DPP, a very powerful politician in Denmark. She calls the shots when the restrictive Danish immigration policies are formulated.

Calling the relationship a "community of value" is Danish political newspeak that signals close ideological affinity. Venstre, Anders Fogh Rasmussen's governing party, is traditionally the liberalist party in Danish politics, favoring a limited, non-interventionist state and low-tax politicies. The Danes, however, are fond of their welfare state. So, in order to stay in power and win the next election, Fogh Rasmussen has been moving towards the centre. But in doing so he alienates the stauncher liberalist ideological elements of his party. The close relationship to the DPP makes the move towards the centre credible, as the DPP also favours welfare policies, especially towards the elderly who are a core electoral group for the party.

It is, however, only in the welfare field that the two parties are center parties. In foreign policy they both support Danish military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and a close relationship to the US. Development aid to third world countries has been cut down, and the previous close relationship to and support of Nordic countries' solidarity policies towards third world issues and national independence movements has been given up.

Continuing his newspeak Hjort Frederiksen defines the common ground of the two rightist parties: "We're preoccupied with the coherence of the Danish society, of being Danish and considering central values like freedom of speech and democracy. . ... We have a whole number of values in common". By connecting "being Danish" and "the values of freedom of speech and democracy", this top lieutenant of Anders Fogh Rasmussen makes a spiritual connection to the Mohammed cartoons case, which was a traumatic event in Danish politics that really divided the nation, pitting groups in the Danish ruling class against each others in ways that have not been seen in Danish politics before. By committing his party to the DPP, what Hjort Frederiksen is really saying is: We'll stand firmly together if we're confronted with "new onslaugths from islamists" who are not ready to accept the special Danish interpretation of freedom of speech, which implies the right to mock other people's faith in any way the Danes see fit.

It is also a warning to the political left in Denmark, which seems to be gaining electoral support in opinion polls: You can just come forward. We're ready for a fight. He is defining on what turf the fight will take place. It'll be on the turf of xenophobic politics where Fogh Rasmussen previously he has proved that he is the real master of spin and ceremonies.

Chavez Call for UN Reforms

"Dictator Bush" is more popular in Denmark. Since the right came to power in 2001, Denmark has been one of the US' staunchest allies. Here Danish PM and foreign minister in dog chains. Cooperation with the Americans helps to sell Lurpak and getting good deals for Danish defence contractors:

At his speech to the UN general assembly yesterday Hugo Chavez spoke virulently against "dictator" Bush and the American quest for world domination, and he suggested some reforms of the UN system:

"... The assembly have been turned into a merely deliberative organ. We have no power, no power to make any impact on the terrible situation in the world. And that is why Venezuela once again proposes, here, today, 20 September, that we re-establish the United Nations.
Last year, Madam, we made four modest proposals that we felt to be crucially important. We have to assume the responsibility our heads of state, our ambassadors, our representatives, and we have to discuss it.
The first is expansion, and Mullah talked about this yesterday right here. The Security Council, both as it has permanent and non-permanent categories, (inaudible) developing countries and LDCs must be given access as new permanent members. That's step one.
Second, effective methods to address and resolve world conflicts, transparent decisions.
Point three, the immediate suppression -- and that is something everyone's calling for -- of the anti-democratic mechanism known as the veto, the veto on decisions of the Security Council.
Let me give you a recent example. The immoral veto of the United States allowed the Israelis, with impunity, to destroy Lebanon. Right in front of all of us as we stood there watching, a resolution in the council was prevented.
Fourthly, we have to strengthen, as we've always said, the role and the powers of the secretary general of the United Nations".

It is obvious there is a great need to reform the UN. Since the foundation of the organisation it has functioned more or less as a branch of the State Department in Washington. Whenever the US has been discontented with debates and resolutions in the General Assembly funds have been frozen, until the organisation became more malleable.

Now the US under the leadership of Bush is trying to bully the whole world to accept its manichean image of the world as a fight between good and evil. Actually the purpose is not so much to fight real life terrorists as to find a recipe for world domination.

However, the world is changing. The US is not so much a dominant power as it has been. The growing energy shortage is felt acutely. That is what gives a country like Venezueala considerable leverage. The US is becoming increasingly indebted because of the massive deficits in its balance of payments. That means that the rest of the world has to finance US militarism and quest for world domination.

This situation is becoming increasingly untenable. Even though the US enjoys considerable support from its docile allies in Western Europe, the world is in the midst of profound economic changes at the moment. Big countries that were previously seen as "underdeveloped economies" are gaining stature as still larger economies vying for markets and resources. How long will they accept American dominance?

Seen in that light it is high time that the Venezuelan proposals are taken seriously. The UN must be reformed so it reflects a sincere multilateralism.

Mysterious Intelligence Leaks in Vollsmose terror case

Last Monday, September 11th, Danish tabloid paper the BT got hold of a secret report about explosives seized at Vollsmose, the council housing ghetto outside Odense where the alleged terror suspects lived. The secret report was found in the street outside the Civil Emergency Agency in Copenhagen. It was a report on analysis data of the alleged explosives found at the alleged terrorists' residences.

The other leak is a confidential report containing names, ID numbers, telephone numbers, etc of the presumed terrorists and the staff involved in the arrests of the presumed terrorists from Vollsmose. This report was found in a metro station in the vicinity of Copenhagen. The chief of Danish intelligence Lars Findsen explains it by carelessness. The intelligence officer who lost this report has been dismissed.

Legal experts find it doubtful that both incidents could be entirely accidental.

Division of powers in Danish Constitution threatened?

The presumed terror case in Vollsmose, Odense, has provoked fear among some politicians and legal experts for the principle of the division of powers in the Danish constitution. According to this constitutional principle the power to legislate resides with parliament (Folketinget), the power to administrate with the government and the ministries, and the power to pass sentences resides with the courts.

After the apprehension of the presumed terrorists the Danish minister of Justice Lene Espersen said that it is a very serious case, perhaps the most serious ever, and that the police has got very far in its investigations. A responsible high-ranking minister, and least of all the minister of justice, should not say such things, as it may affect the courts. The courts are supposed to be completely independent of the executive branch of government. They are supposed to pass judgments independently of what leading politicians think.

In The Berlingske Tidende September 6th the chairman of the Judicial Committee in the Danish parliament Peter Skaarup (Danish People's Party) writes:

It is with a mixture of fear and relief that one sees that Denmark for the second time within a year manages to unravel a terror group. The Relief of course is due to the fact that the Danish Police Secret Service have been on the spot at the right time and apparently have unraveled an armed and determined terror group right in the midst of Danish society.

Skaarup talks in a way that suggests that the presumed terrorists have been convicted. He is chairman of the Judicial Committee of the Danish Parliament! Actually there is no sentence in the case so far. We are still waiting for the court to speak.

Terror case makes Libyan-Danish blogger feel guilty

Libyan-Danish blogger Safia Aoude writes about the Danish terror case on her blog:

A number of Danish Muslims have been apprehended by Danish Intelligence under suspicion of alleged terrorist planning. According to reliable sources police has found incriminating material in their homes, such as metal scraps, nail polish and Islamic books.

Makes me feel sooooo guilty! Please make lotsa dou3a Danish Intelligence doesn´t know what I have been buying at my local Seven Eleven convenience store earlier today - just minutes before I proceeded to attend Islamic fiqh teaching at my local mosque.....maybe I could set the entire thing off by burping nitrogene air right from my lungs after drinking it ?

The Danish intelligence police have been looking for fertilizer with nitrogen contents in allotment gardens near Vollsmose, the suburbian ghetto where the presumed terrorists live. Sacks with fertilizer have been seized and may be shown in court as evidence to prove that the young people were plotting a terrorist act. Seven young men are in custody at the moment.

Police want Terror Suspects to be kept in Custody

At the city court of Odense Danish police have today asked for 5 of the terror suspects from Vollsmose, Odense, to be on remand, pending further investigation of the case. Court proceedings are held behind closed doors. There's speculation in the media that the police badly need sufficient hard evidence to press for charges of terror under the article 114 in the Danish penal code.

In the meantime there has been a great deal of interest in getting details about the life of the Danish muslim convert, one of the suspects. Actually, a few thousand young Danes have converted to islam.

The 31 year old Abdallah Andersen was a Salvation Army member before converting to Islam. According to The Berlingske Tidende on converting to Islam he promised his mother that he would never be an accessory to terror in the name of Allah, a promise he could easily make, as he found it was not consistent with islam to make terror.

He lived a very common Danish life in a drab semi-detached house in a suburb of Odense, the third largest city in Denmark. The Berlingske journalist finds it hard to believe that a terrorist should have grown up in this environment.

Most people reporters speak to in Vollsmose, Odense, express great surprise that these youngsters are presumed terrorists.

Abdallah Andersen converted to Islam about five years ago. He changed his first name into a muslim first name. He grew a beard, and he began to wear the jilbab, a traditional Arab-Muslim dress.

Abdallah has told local papers about his conversion to Islam. It was due to his great curiosity about life and his multireligious group of friends that he started reading the Quran. In Islam he found inner peace of mind that he had not been able to find in the Christian faith. A few years ago he moved to Vollsmose, one of the largest council housing areas in Denmark where a large part of the Muslim population of Odense live.

He defended the islamic way of life and was an opponent of Naser Khader, a prominent advocate of a Danish kind of Euro-Islam, and other "infidels", whom he criticized in frequent reader's letters in local newspapers.

Abdallah also participated in chat rooms on the Internet, where he discussed muslim norms and way of life with other muslims. Even though friends describe him as "wise", it has been difficult for him to get a job because of his beard and the jilbab. He has spent a lot of time nursing his sick mother, going to the job centre, and to religious service in the local mosque. A friend describes him as a solitary figure, divided between two cultures. He wanted to be married and get a family. This was difficult because parents with an Arabic background would not "give" their daughter to a Danish muslim. That made him sad; he felt as much a muslim as the others.

Danish Muslim Convert wrote Letter to the Editor shortly before Arrest

The ethnic Danish muslim convert that we talked about in the last post, wrote a letter to the editor of The Politiken one and a half hours before Danish secret service police smashed the door to his appartment and arrested him on suspicion of being an accessory to terrorist plotting.

The letter to the editor was published in the Politiken this morning. In the letter the suspect Abdallah Andersen, Bøgeparken 236, Odense writes critically about an interview with Danish media darlings Karen Jespersen and Ralf Pittelkow that was published by the Politiken in its Saturday edition. Karen Jespersen is a former Social Democratic minister of Home Affairs. Ralf Pittelkow, a former marxist - later spin doctor for former Social Democratic prime minister Nyrup Rasmussen, is now political commentator at conservative Danish paper the Jyllandsposten. They are a couple and well-known for a "stand firm" attitude in the Danish debate on immigrants. Karen Jespersen, a former radical socialist, joined the Social Democrats in the beginning of the 1980's. She became an increasingly outspoken critic of the Social Democratic left's "soft" political line on immigration issues. As the Interior Minister of the social democratic governments of the 1990s she was increasingly isolated at the right wing of the party, especially after suggesting that asylum seekers should be placed on an island, away from Danish population centres.

On Tuesday a new book entitled "Islamists and Naivists - an Indictment" by Jespersen and Pittelkow was published by the publisher People's Press. The Saturday interview in The Politiken is about this book.

In his letter to the editor entitled Fanaticism Abdallah Andersen writes critically of the Jespersen-Pittelkow couple and their views on islam:

".... Karen Jespersen and Ralf Pittelkow write in the best Helle Brix style; islam is not only a faith, but as a religion it carries the seeds of a fanaticism that is threatening Western society." - He continues criticising the two for prejudice and ignorance about islam. He concludes, "yes, there is indeed fanaticism in Denmark", and he expresses his wish to ask the question: "Why are the Danes so xenophobic. The answer is quite obvious to us muslims living here".

In the interview in the Politiken with Jespersen and Pittelkow they criticize the "naivists" for being soft on islam. The interviewer asks: Who are the "naivists", and they reply:

"The muhammed drawings case was a decisive event. This was the first time you saw that a major part of the Muslim world demanded that islamic law should also apply in Europe. I.e. our rules about freedom of speech should be adjusted to islamic law, the Sharia. That was the crux of that conflict. A major part of those speaking in the Danish debate did not understand that. Those are the ones we call "naivists". "

This is quite clearly an interpretation of what happened in the cartoons crisis. Another possible interpretation might be that the "muslim world" just wanted some respect for their faith. It is typical of hardliners like Jespersen and Pittelkow that they see things in the worst possible light when it comes to understanding what islam and muslims stand for. In that way they probably help to make muslims an explosive issue in Danish politics. They stand for an intellectualised kind of "hate speech" that does not make the issue of immigration easier to deal with in Denmark. In that sense Abdallah Andersen's characterization seems quite relevant. According to the Danish papers Abdallah Andersen has written a number of letters to the editor. Whether this has been a factor in drawing the attention of the police to him, we do not know.

Hospitality

Come in and sit down, Pol. photo


Terrorists are not always as hospitable as the presumed Danish terrorist, who is by the way an ethnic Dane that has converted to islam. Last night when he was arrested the police went in without knocking, smashing the door to his appartment in Vollsmose, Odense. According to Danish newspaper the Politiken, the door to his flat is still open. So if you need some genuine Danish hospitality, come to Vollsmose and pay him a visit. According to Politiken his humble abode is very neat. You can only risk being contaminated by the intellectual climate.

Two of the presumed terrorists were to be kept in isolation for four weeks, the city court of Odense ruled. That means that the police presumably has a case. The public prosecutor will press for charges under the Danish terror legislation (article 114 in the penal code).

The Danish right wing politician Pia Kjaersgaard has called for further strengthening of terror legislation in Denmark. The media has been so kind as to lend ears to her criticism of the lax anti-terror work in Denmark.

Denmark in Shock at Anti-terror Raid in suburban Ghetto

9 young men have been held in the immigrant suburb of Vollsmose at the outskirts of Odense, the third largest city in Denmark, about a hundred miles from Copenhagen. BBC News writes about the case:

The country's Justice Minister, Lene Espersen, said it was likely they were planning an attack in Denmark.
The men had been under surveillance for months and were detained on suspicion of planning terror acts.
All nine are due in court later and are being held under anti-terror laws introduced after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US.
Ms Espersen said: "The clues police found indicate that they were very likely planning an attack somewhere in Denmark.

According to the evening news on Danish TV the arrests were quite dramatic. The police kicked doors in and surprised the suspects, who were put in handcuffs. Computers and various effects were confiscated by the police. Two of the suspects were released today.

Danish politicians across the political spectrum use the occasion to stress the need for further strengthening the anti-terror legislation in Denmark and channeling more funds to the secret service police.