Two Somali young men, Danish citizens who had lived in Denmark since they were tiny children have been arrested on terror charges linked to Al-Shabaab.
Here is the story from the Associated Press about the two grateful (not!) young men who were given a chance at a good life by Denmark and said basically “shove-it.”
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Two Danish brothers originally from Somalia were given four weeks of pre-trial detention Tuesday after they were arrested by Denmark’s security service on suspicion of plotting a terror attack.
The older brother, aged 23, was also suspected of having received terror training from the Somali militant group al-Shabab, the PET security service said.
He was arrested late Monday at Copenhagen’s international airport as he arrived by plane from an undisclosed location. At the same time, his 18-year-old brother was arrested in the city of Aarhus, in western Denmark, PET said.
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U.S. and European officials fear that young recruits from Somali immigrant communities in the U.S. state of Minnesota,* Britain, and the Nordic countries could train in Somalia and return to carry out attacks.
PET head Jakob Scharf said that between 25 and 40 people “with connections to Denmark have received training or taken part in militant activities with al-Shabab in Somalia,” and at least two people with connections to Denmark have committed suicide attacks in Somalia.
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The 23-year-old had been at an al-Shabab training camp in Somalia from Jan. 18 to Feb. 21, prosecutor Lone Damgaard said. He was the first person in Denmark charged with receiving training with the aim of committing an act of terror.
The charges, which are preliminary, were read out at the Aarhus City Court behind closed doors, as is customary in terror cases.
“We are shocked that some young people who have lived in Denmark for the past 16 years decide to travel to Somalia to make contact with al-Shabab,” said Abdirahman M. Lidle, a spokesman for an umbrella association of 13 Somali groups in Aarhus.
Lidle said he was not sure if he knew the men. “There are 500 to 600 young Somalis in Aarhus and we cannot know everything,” he said.
Denmark has been in the crosshairs of Islamist terror groups since the publication of newspaper cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in 2005, an act that offended many Muslims.
A Somali man living in Denmark was convicted of terrorism and sentenced to 10 years in prison after breaking into the home of one of the cartoonists with an ax in 2010.
* We have written dozens and dozens of posts on the Somalis who thumbed their noses at the good life given to them through the refugee resettlement program of the US State Department and went back to Africa for terror training—search RRW for “Somali missing youths” and all of those posts should pop up.