5 Jun 2012

Four jailed over cartoon attack plot

6:00 am on 5 June 2012

A court in Denmark has found four men guilty of plotting a gun attack on a newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

The four, one Tunisian and three Swedish citizens of Arab origin, were each sentenced on Monday to prison terms of 12 years.

They were arrested in December 2010, hours before the planned attack on the offices of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Copenhagen.

In 2005, the newspaper published a dozen cartoons lampooning Islam and the Prophet Mohammad, one depicting him wearing a bomb in his turban.

Publication of the images sparked protests in Muslim countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia in 2006 in which at least 50 people died.

The court in Copenhagen heard the men wanted to kill as many people as possible in an attack on the newspaper's offices.

The presiding judge ordered the men to be expelled from Denmark after they serve their sentences and to pay trial costs.