Denmark 2021
06/02/2021: A major anti-terror operation was conducted by PET in cooperation with German police between Feruary 6, and February 8, 2021 against a group of people suspected of "having planned one or more terrorist attacks or participated in attempted terrorism." 14 suspects were arrested and especially three Syrian brothers who purchased large quantities of chemicals that can be used to make explosives. One of them is in Germany thus, 13 persons were arrested on the Danish side. The chemicals were reportedly purchased from a dealer in Poland in quantities so large that it caught the eye of German Intelligence services. They all pleaded not guilty. (Source)
15/03/2021: The 2021 Assessment of the Terrorist Threat to Denmark was published by local authorities. Following the Covid-19 pandemic crisis and the terrorist attacks in France and Austria back in 2020, Danish authorities stated that terrorist threat remains “serious” and that militant Islamists still constitute the most significant terrorist threat against Denmark. The threat emanates in particular from individuals who sympathize with and are inspired by foreign militant Islamist terrorist groups, especially from IS and Al-Qaeda. (Source)
27/04/2021: The East Jutland Police, in collaboration with PET and Copenhagen Police, carried out an arrest and search operation at several addresses in the Aarhus area and in Copenhagen and managed to arrest six suspects, four of whom were in the Aarhus area and two in Copenhagen. They are men aged 27 to 35 and five of them are charged with financing terrorism. (Source)
25/08/2021: The Danish woman arrested upon her return from Syria back in July 2020, was sentenced to five years in prison for promoting terrorism and for traveling to Syria to join IS and supported their terrorist activities. She did not plead guilty and even denied having been in Syria claiming instead to have stayed in Egypt and Türkiye with her boyfriend despite evidence confirming her presence in IS-controlled territory. (Source)
17/09/2021: The Copenhagen City Court sentenced Adam Touhou, 29-year-old, to six years in prison and stripped of his Danish citizenship for recruiting a man to IS, thus making him the first person to be convicted in the High Court of recruiting another person to terrorism. The recruitment for which Adam Touhou is convicted occurred when he wrote messages on Facebook in 2013 to his childhood friend, Hafed Matoussi, a Tunisian man from Aarhus, in which he encouraged him to go to Syria and join IS. Matoussi was was sentenced to three years in prison by the Western High Court in 2018 for his two-week stay in the Caliphate, where he was trained in the use of weapons and was also permanently deported. Touhou, who pleaded not guilty, immediately appealed the verdict. (Source)
28/09/2021: Abdullah Akbulut, the 24-year-old man who was arrested in April 2020 for purchasing ammunition to commit terrorist attacks was sentenced by the Court in Frederiksberg to ten years in prison and deportation to Türkiye upon his release as he will be stripped from his Danish citizenship. Considering the lack of a concrete plan at the stage of his arrest, his sentenced was reduced to ten years instead of the twelve-years sentence normally stated by the Law. His lawyer tried to pass him off as mentally challenged to lower the sentence since his IQ is reportedly lower than his siblings and common people yet it is actually not low enough to be considered as intellectually deficient. He appealed the verdict. (Source)
07/10/2021: Three Danish women and 14 children came back to Denmark from the Kurdish-controlled al-Roj camp in Northern Syria as it was announced by the Government on May 15, 2021. They have joined IS in 2014 and settled in the Caliphate taking their children along. Nine of the 14 children were born in Denmark and the five youngest children were born in Syria. One of the women has dual citizenship, while the other two are ethnic Danes. Five Danish children remain in Syria but since their mothers were stripped of their Danish citizenship and that they refused to part with their children, the cannot expect to be repatriated. (Source)
10/12/2021: Sille Bøgild Hansen returned to Denmark with her three young children from Afghanistan where she promoted the activities of the terrorist organization Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP) during her stay between June 23, 2017 and May 1, 2021. She was arrested when she landed at Copenhagen Airport and her three children were handed over to the social authorities. (Source)