MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

“OSLO, Norway — Two men were found guilty Monday of involvement in an al Qaeda plot to attack a Danish newspaper that caricturerd 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, England, 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.

It wasn’t immediately clear if any of the defendants would appeal…

Davud, who moved to Norway in 1999 and later became a Norwegian citizen, also said his co-defendants helped him acquire bomb-making ingredients but didn’t know he was planning an attack.

Prosecutors said the Norwegian cell first wanted to attack Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, whose 12 cartoons of Muhammad sparked furious protests in Muslim countries in 2006, and then changed plans to seek to murder one of the cartoonists instead.

Bujak, an Iraqi Kurd, said the paper and the cartoonist were indeed the targets, but described the plans as ‘just talk.'” Read more.