Four young Muslims were charged in Denmark on Wednesday with planning terrorist bombings in Denmark or abroad, the justice ministry said. The four men were accused of acquiring chemicals and laboratory instruments to make triacetone triperoxide (TATP) explosives, often used by suicide bombers.
TATP bombs were used in the July 2005 London bombings. The identities of the four were not disclosed. They are residents of Denmark but do not hold Danish citizenship.
The men were part of a group of nine people arrested in a September 2006 swoop in Odense in central Denmark. Three of the nine had been remanded in custody, while the six others, including the fourth person indicted on Wednesday, were released.
At the time of the raid, Danish Justice Minister Lene Espersen said that the discovery of the alleged terrorist cell was "the most serious" such case Denmark has known.
If convicted, the four face life sentences. In a separate terrorism case in Denmark, a 17-year-old Dane of Palestinian origin, Abdul Basit Abu-Lifa, was in February convicted of planning a terrorist attack in Europe and was sentenced to seven years in prison. Three other men also on trial, aged 18, 20 and 21, were acquitted by the Copenhagen court.
The group had been arrested in October 2005 in raids in and around Copenhagen. They were accused of having helped two accomplices, a Swede of Serbian-Montenegrin origin and a Turkish-born Dane, travel to Sarajevo to acquire explosives and weapons aimed at carrying out a terror attack in Europe.