Danish authorities said Thursday they prevented a terror attack after three arrests in Denmark and a fourth in the Netherlands, as Israel said the suspects in Denmark were acting “on behalf of Hamas”.
In Berlin, prosecutors said German police also arrested three suspected members of Hamas on Thursday, accused of preparing an attack against Jewish targets in Europe.
The three men, along with another suspect arrested in the Netherlands, were said to have begun preparing a weapons cache in the German capital where arms would be “kept in a state of readiness in view of potential terrorist attacks against Jewish institutions in Europe,” German federal prosecutors said in a statement.
Danish police refused to comment on whether there was any link between the arrests reported in Denmark and Germany.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said meanwhile in a statement that Danish security forces had “thwarted an attack, the goal of which was to kill innocent civilians on European soil.”
“The Hamas terrorist organisation has been working relentlessly and exhaustively to expand its lethal operations to Europe, and thereby constitute a threat to the domestic security of these countries,” Netanyahu said.
Danish police did not go into details about the suspects or give any indication as to the possible target of the alleged plot.
“It was a group that was planning an act of terror,” Flemming Drejer, head of operations at the PET intelligence service, told a news conference.
There were “ramifications involving other countries” and organised crime, he added.
Drejer would only say that other suspects currently abroad were also thought to be implicated in the plot.
The PET and several police districts made the arrests in Denmark in early morning raids in several parts of the Scandinavian country, the officials said.
The threat level against Denmark is judged to be elevated, with the PET putting it at four on their five-point threat scale.
Police stepped up their presence in Copenhagen but said the capital remained “safe”.
The Jewish community nonetheless cancelled a public Hanukkah celebration planned for Thursday evening, Danish media reported.
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the operations “show us the situation that Denmark is in”.
“For several years we have noted that there are people who live in Denmark and who do not wish us well, who are against our democracy, our freedom, and who are against Danish society,” she told reporters.
Over the summer, Denmark and neighbouring Sweden became the target of anger in several Muslim countries after a slew of protests in Scandinavia involving burnings and desecrations of the Koran.
In Iraq, nearly a thousand protesters attempted to march on the Danish embassy in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone in late July following a call by firebrand cleric Moqtada Sadr.
Between July 21 and October 24 this year, 483 book burnings or flag burnings were recorded in Denmark, according to national police figures.
In response Denmark’s parliament adopted a law earlier this month that criminalises the burning, tearing or otherwise defiling of religious texts such as Islam’s holy book.
In 2006, a wave of anti-Danish anger and violence erupted in the Muslim world following the publication in the small Nordic country of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
And in February 2015 a gunman who had voiced allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group opened fire at a cultural centre in Copenhagen that was hosting a forum on Islam and free speech.
Last year, a Danish court sentenced an IS sympathiser to 16 years in jail for plotting a bomb attack. The verdict was the most severe ever handed down under Denmark’s anti-terrorism laws.
