Plot Against Embassies Foiled in Norway

Norwegian authorities announced today the arrest of four men who are accused of planning to blow up the American and Israeli embassies in that country, as well as shooting up a synagogue:

Norwegian prosecutors unveiled on Friday evidence against four men detained on suspicion of plotting to blow up the U.S. and Israeli embassies and of participating in a shooting at the Oslo synagogue last weekend.

Prosecutor Unni Fries told a court the Norwegian secret services had bugged the car of the main suspect and recorded conversations between the men planning the attacks.

Early on Sunday morning at least 10 shots fired from an automatic weapon hit Oslo’s only synagogue. No one was hurt in the shooting, the most serious in a string of attacks in recent months on the Nordic country’s small Jewish community.

Norway may be a Nordic country, but it doesn’t sound as though that’s the real source of the threat:

Police have identified the detainees only as men between the ages of 20 and 30. Defense lawyers, who said their clients were innocent, said one suspect was of Turkish origin, two had Pakistani backgrounds and one was a native Norwegian.

The ringleader of the group apparently gets around:

Fries said the main suspect had “expressed extreme Islamist views” and was briefly detained during this summer’s World Cup by German police, who found drawings of rockets in his car.

During a trip to Britain in June he was reported to have told his girlfriend over the telephone that he “felt that he had to act”, Fries said. She did not say whether prosecutors were linking the suspects with any extremist organization.

The fact that this guy was in England in June is intriguing, given that the plot to blow up British and American airliners was to have matured later in the summer.

Via Power Line News.

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