Two men were found guilty on Monday of involvement in an al-Qaeda plot to attack a Danish newspaper that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad, the first convictions under Norway’s anti-terror laws.
A third defendant was acquitted of terror charges but convicted of helping the others acquire explosives.
Investigators say the plot was linked to the same al-Qaeda planners behind thwarted attacks against the New York subway system and a shopping mall Manchester in 2009. The Oslo district court sentenced alleged ringleader Mikael Davud, to seven years in prison and co-defendant Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak to three and a half years.
Judge Oddmund Svarteberg said the court found that Davud, a Chinese Muslim, “planned the attack together with al-Qaeda”. Bujak was deeply involved in the preparations, but it couldn’t be proved that he was aware of Davud’s contacts with al-Qaeda, the judge said.
The third defendant, David Jakobsen, who assisted police in the investigation, was convicted on an explosives charge and sentenced to four months in prison – time he’s already served in pretrial detention.