November 16, 2011
Your Danish Cartoons Hangover Update
The
beginning of the trial of three men in Norway in part for plans to bomb the
Jyllands-Posten newspaper and assassinate cartoonist Kurt Westergaard has proven to be a treasure trove of compelling facts. For one thing, it seems sort of strange that the three men, Mikael Davud, Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak and David Jakobsen, are being tried at once. Davud is the one targeted for the plot to blow up the newspaper building, the other two seem to there primarily for their designs to kill Westergaard. Jakobsen -- 33 and not 38 like the wire reports yesterday indicated -- even helped authorities at one point, and didn't remain in custody like the other two. If I'm reading the various reports correctly, Davud and the others were originally arrested for a plot to blow up the Chinese embassy in Oslo, which Davud has apparently admitted to, but they're only being tried for the Danish Cartoons-related crimes. Like I said, sort of confusing.
It seems clear is that the six-week trial will lean heavily on Davud's ties to Al Qaeda, that this will be a huge test for Norway's new anti-terrorism laws, and that the US ambassador is impatient with the amount of time Norway's investigations and prosecutions take -- for whatever that last one is worth, which seems to me not much. It also seems like the recent firebombing of the
Charlie Hebdo offices in France will give this trial some currency that it might not have had otherwise.
posted 5:00 am PST |
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