COPENHAGEN — Danish police arrested eight suspected Islamic militants here Tuesday, charging two of them with planning a terrorist attack and attempted murder in what was described as a serious plot with direct ties to Al Qaeda.
Police evacuated a building in the Danish capital before searching an apartment, where they found large quantities of explosive material. The chief of the police intelligence service held an unusual news conference, at which he underscored the urgency of the threat and the alleged foreign connections of the suspects, six of whom hold Danish citizenship.
The arrests "prevented a terrorist attack," said chief Jakob Sharf, who termed the suspects "militant Islamists with international contacts."
"The fact that the suspects have a connection to leading members of Al Qaeda is a very significant aspect of this case," he said.
Sharf did not identify the leaders or the target of the alleged plot and disclosed few details. But the case is the latest of several revealing the intensity of Islamic extremism in the multiethnic immigrant neighborhoods of this small, tranquil and tolerant country.
The accusations of foreign links reiterated the fears of Western counter-terrorism officials about a resurgent core leadership of the Al Qaeda network, which during the last year has allegedly been training Western Europeans in clandestine facilities near the Pakistani-Afghan border and dispatching them on missions to attack their homelands.
Fears have been particularly high in Germany, where militant cells have had links to extremists in neighboring Denmark, since anti-terrorism agencies arrested or detected extremists who had traveled to Pakistan for training.
A law enforcement source said today that two Germans and another man had been arrested in a plot against Frankfurt Airport and U.S. military targets in Germany, including the Army barracks at Hanau. The case involved links to militants in Pakistan, the source said, but it was not immediately known whether it was related to the Denmark case.
Officials in Germany have been warning for about six months for Americans to be on alert because of indications of a terrorist threat.
"Al Qaeda has won a foothold after being on the defensive for a period of time," Sharf said.
The two chief suspects, both 21, were identified as a taxi driver of Pakistani origin and a man of Afghan origin. The ethnic backgrounds of the others include Somalian and Turkish.
