16-year-old charged with planning terrorism

A 16-year-old girl has been charged with planning a terrorist attack on two schools, her own and the Jewish Caroline School in Copenhagen, police said yesterday, writes seven59.dk and b.dk.

The girl, then only 15, was detained in January over the possession of explosives and suspicion of carrying out a terrorist attack. According to TV2 she had recently converted to Islam.

The police initially threw a cloud of secrecy over the case but later said they had found bomb-making manuals at her home in Kundby, north of Copenhagen, and that the girl had attempted to bomb her own school with the triacetone triperoxide (TATP) explosive, which has recently appeared as a terrorist weapon in the Middle East.

No change in security threat assessment

A police press release said the girl’s 24-year-old friend, allegedly a former foreign-fighter in Syria, had also been charged with complicity in preparing the bombs.

Both have pleaded not guilty. They have not been named by the authorities or media, according to Danish practice.

PET (Danish Intelligence) said the arrests had not changed their assessment of the security threat, classified as ‘serious’ since February 2015 when a gunman killed two people in shooting attacks on a debating event and a Copenhagen synagogue before being shot dead himself by police.

Read the article on the Danish news site B.dk here

universitypost@adm.ku.dk

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