Denmark Trial Begins For Men Plotting Mumbai-Style Terrorist Attack Targeting Danish Crown Prince and Mohammed Cartoons Newspaper

One of the dozen cartoons dating back to 2005 from Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten depicting the Islamic prophet Mohammed.

Four men pleaded not guilty to terrorism charges in a Copenhagen court on Friday after prosecutors accused them of plotting to carry out an attack on the offices of Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten while the crown prince was scheduled to visit. Three of the men were mid-eastern immigrants residing in Sweden who were arrested by police in that country in late 2010- a few days before they were scheduled to carry out their attack in Copenhagen.

Prosecutors have charged the three men along with an accomplice originally from Tunisia with terrorism and weapons charges. One defendant pleaded guilty to weapons charges but not guilty to the terrorism charges. Although Prosecutor Henrik Plaehn said there was no apparent indication that Crown Prince Frederik was specifically targeted for attack, he was scheduled to attend an event at the Jyllands Posten headquarters when the attack was supposed to take place. Speak

ing to the court on the first day of the trial, prosecutor Henrik Plaehn said the four men — three Swedish citizens and one Swedish resident — had been arrested hours before an appearance by Crown Prince Frederik at the Politiken newspaper in Copenhagen.

The heir to the Danish throne was to distribute an annual sports award and Plaehn said prosecutors believed that terrorists had intended to launch a violent attack on the ceremony, which eventually took place as scheduled.

Plaehn also said the alleged terrorists were linked with Pakistan, a point he would try to prove during the trial.

The 2005 Jyllands Posten Mohammed cartoons caused an uproar throughout the Islamic world, resulting in widespread protests and sporadic attacks against Danish embassies. In January 2010, a Somali man with ties to that Islamic Al Shabaab militia was shot in the leg and wrist by police as he broke into the Copenhagen home of Kurt Westergaard, one of the cartoonists. Although Westgaard was unarmed, he had time to grab his 5 year old granddaughter before the two of them locked themselves in a panic room.

Although Islam supposedly prohibits any kind of depiction of Mohammed, there are a number of depictions of Mohammed ranging from 13th century Persian manuscripts to a 2001 episode of South Park. None of these representations became controversial until after the 2005 Jyllands Posten backlash.

Navy Seals Kill 9 Pirates, Free American, Danish Hostages in Somali Raid

Commandos from the US Navy's SEAL Team 6 swooped into a central Somali town and raided a pirate camp where two aid workers were being held hostage in the early morning hours on Wednesday.

MOGADISHU, SOMALIA - The Navy SEALs parachuted into the darkness, landing more than 2 miles from their objective: a small bush camp in north-central Somalia where an American aid worker and a Danish colleague were being held captive.

The commandos, several dozen in all, shed their chutes and moved quietly through the brush. The compound had been under U.S. surveillance for weeks after an intelligence tip had signaled the whereabouts of the hostages, Ohio native Jessica Buchanan, 32, and Poul Thisted, 60. But investigators believed that Buchanan's health was failing and that she might suffer kidney failure. "We were told that she was not well and, left untreated, her condition could be life-threatening," said a senior U.S. official.

About 2 a.m. Wednesday, the SEALs stormed the kidnappers' compound, catching the guards as they were sleeping after having chewed the narcotic leaf khat for much of the evening, said a self-described pirate.

The aid workers and SEALs were picked up by helicopters, which flew to an airstrip at Galkayo, 60 miles north of the encampment. There the hostages were transferred to a U.S. military plane and flown to the neighboring nation of Djibouti, site of a U.S. base known as Camp Lemonnier. They would be leaving Djibouti "fairly soon," one U.S. official said.

Buchanan and Thisted were working with a Danish organization that was providing aid in clearing land mines from the area when they were abducted by a gang of kidnappers in October 2011. President Obama reportedly authorized the mission because there were concerns that Buchanan's health was deteriorating after months in captivity.

The kidnappers, who would frequently move the American and Danish hostages around to confound any rescue attempt, were not believed to be affiliated with the Islamic Al-Shabaab militia, but rather a local criminal gang with connections to pirates.

The SEALs had reportedly secured the cooperation of a local clan and the use of a local airstrip in the nearby city of Galkayo for both helicopters and fixed wing aircraft.

Somali sources said that the hostages, who had been held for three months, had been moved around central Somalia on a daily basis in an attempt to frustrate rescue operations. Kidnappers had regularly complained that they could hear aircraft over head.

Elders of the Habre Gedir have been negotiating the release of the two aid workers along with journalist Michael Scott Moore, who was kidnapped last Saturday, and British hostage Judith Tebutt who was abducted from Kiwayu in Kenya last year.

"We are very happy about this incident because the pirates are the ones causing insecurity in this region," Mohammed Omar told the Somalia Report news agency.

The spate of kidnappings by armed Somali pirates last fall- including the abduction of British tourist Judith Tebutt from a resort in northern Kenya- led to incursions into lawless Somalia by the Kenyan military in the south and the Ethiopian military in the west.

In the capital city of Mogadishu, the fragile Transitional government backed by peacekeepers from the African Union has waged a campaign against the Islamic al-Shabaab militia in Mogadishu and beyond.

The SEAL operation is thought to be the first confirmed US Military land operation since the disastrous 1993 Blackhawk Down incident in which 18 American soldiers and roughly 150 Somali fighters were killed in an ambush and running battle in Mogadishu.

Another Horn of Africa Update: U.S. Commandos Re-Take Japanese Tanker; Danish Yacht Seized by Pirates

OMAN: U.S. Commandos have boarded a Japanese oil tanker that was seized by pirates off the coast of Oman and re-taken the vessel without firing a shot on Sunday.

Twenty-four crew members on the MV Guanabara took refuge in a protected part of the vessel after reporting they were under attack Saturday, roughly 328 nautical miles southeast of Duqm in southern Oman.

A special unit from the destroyer USS Bulkeley boarded the oil tanker Sunday and detained the suspected pirates, according to a news release from the Combined Maritime Forces (CMF). No shots were fired and no injuries were reported.

"The ships and aircraft under my command have today scored a real and immediate victory through the disruption of a suspected act of piracy and the detention of individuals believed to be engaging in piracy," CMF's counter-piracy commander, Abdul Alheem, said in a statement.

Two vessels from the NATO counter-piracy task force- the USS Bulkeley and the Turkish frigate TCG Giresun- received a distress call from the Guanabara and shadowed the vessel before it was boarded by the commandos.

The captured pirates will reportedly face trial in Tokyo.

PUNTLAND: Seven Danish nationals were captured by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean on Feb. 24th after their yacht was seized. This captives includes a family of five (the parents and three children) as well as 2 crew members.

An official from the village of Bandarbeyla in Puntland said that it was likely the Danes were being held in a mountainous region called Hul Anod. The official also said that a warship was spotted some 1.5 miles off the coast of the village and cautioned against any sort of military operation after the massacre of 4 Americans at sea last month.

According to piracy expert, the average ransom payout for a large shipping vessel and its crew is in the neighborhood of $5 million. A couple from the UK were released in September 2010 reportedly after a ransom of $1 million was paid out.

MOGADISHU: Somali officials have reported that an American from Alabama who joined the Al Shabaab Islamist group was killed in clashes with soldiers from the Somali transitional government and African Union peacekeepers this week.

Somali Defense Minister Abdihakim Mohamud Haji Fiqi told The Associated Press that Somali officials do not have a body and that the intelligence reports have not yet been confirmed.

"We have information saying that he died," Fiqi said. "I'm not sure 100 percent sure but this is the information that we get from different sources. We need to make sure."

Omar Hammami, who grew up in the middle-class town of Daphne, Alabama, joined the al-Qaida-linked Somali militants in 2007 while he was in his early 20s. He became the most high-profile American member of al-Shabab and had taken on the nom de guerre of Abu Mansour al-Amriki, or "the American."

Forces from the Somali transitional government, backed by African Union peacekeepers have been mounting a countrattack against the Islamist al Shabaab militia. On Monday, the Somali and multinational forces were able to seize control of the border town of Bulo Hawo- along the Kenyan and Ethiopian border- from Al Shabaab; the first time forces from the UN-backed Transitional government were able to exert control over territory outside of Mogadishu.

[hat tip: Jammie Wearing Fool]

Somali Man Shot By Danish Police Charged With Attempted Murder of 'Motoons' Cartoonist

(Ernst van Norde/AP)

A 28-year old Somali man was charged with attempted murder after breaking into the Aarhus home of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard with an axe and knife before being shot in the hand and knee by police on Friday night.

The head of Denmark's PET intelligence services says that the man charged in the attacks was an asylum-seeker who had ties to Somalia's Al-Shabaab militia. He was wheeled into a Aarhus courthouse on a stretcher and accompanied by his lawyer on Saturday.

Reports state that the would-be assailant broke in the glass on Westergaard's front door Friday, but the Jyllands-Posten cartoonist had time to grab his five year old granddaughter and lock themselves in a panic room. The intruder was still on the property and armed with the axe and knife when the police arrived and shot him after refusing to surrender.

(Jyllands Posten/Kurt Westergaard)

Westergaard is best known for the series of 'Mohammed cartoons' published in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten newspaper in 2005 that subsequently sparked protests and rioting in several Islamic nations. [Why the same Muslims who saw it fit to torch buildings and go on a rampage in their own capitals most likely didn't say a peep when Muslims were slaughtering each other by the thousands in Algeria not too long ago, I'm not sure- NANESB!]. The cartoonist has received numerous death threats and Fatwas calling for his murder and until recently had round-the-clock protection from Danish security services.

New Affiliate Blog Up and Running

And you thought Not Another New England Sports Blog! was poorly done and hastily put together!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present you.....

*fanfare*

Dopenhagen!

This is just a little something I put together to monitor various Green and nanny-state shennanigans in the run-up to the UN-Sanctioned browbeating, blackmail and guilt-tripping of industrialized nations that is sure to be the Copenhagen conference.

The title itself comes from this brilliant parody site, that sadly turned out to be neither parody nor brilliant.