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April 11, 2007

Denmark: Islamist Is Jailed For Inciting Terrorism

Moroccan-born Said Mansour has been convicted today at Copenhagen City Court of inciting terrorism. He has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison, according to Reuters and DPA.

47 year old Said Mansour had been born in Morocco and came to Denmark in 1983, to be with his sister, who had married a man with Danish citizenship. He married a Danish national (a teacher) in 1984, and he now has four children. He became a Danish national in 1988. The court today did not make any rulings concerning the revoking of his citizenship.

Mansour lived in Copenhagen on welfare benefits amounting to $1,800 a month. He had been under investigation since 2004, and had been arrested on Thursday September 8, 2005

He was the first person to be charged under a 2002 anti-terrorism act which outlaws instigation of terrorism or giving advice to terrorists.

He had downloaded jihadist videos, including those of beheadings carried out terrorists, which he then burned onto CDs and DVDs and distributed. He said he had been a close friend of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted of plotting the attack upon the World Trade Center on 26 February, 1993. According to Mansour, an account backed up by police, the blind sheikh stayed at his home in December 1990 and May 1991.

Mansour also claimed to be an associate of Abu Qatada, the cleric who is detention in Britain fighting extradition to his native Jordan, where he has been convicted of several bomb attacks. Abu Qatada has been described as "Al Qaeda's ambassador in Europe". He was also a friend of Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, who is serving a 12 year jail sentence for belonging to a terrorist organization (Al Qaeda).

In an earlier interview with a Danish newspaper, from March 2003, Mansour had described the 9/11 attacks as "a benign kind of terrorism (as) opposed to the malign kind that the United States for so long had carried out against the Muslim world."

Material on his CDs had included Chechens decapitating and shooting Russian soldiers, the beheading of journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, which were shown to Copenhagen City Court at a bail hearing. The CD-ROMs bore the logo of his publishing company, Al Nur (light) Islamic Information. He also distributed a radical magzine called Al Ansar.

It had been claimed in a pre-trial hearing that Mansour had close contacts with Ayman al-Zawahiri, the deputy leader of Al Qaeda. Mansour remained in custody since September 2005. In 2004, when he had taken a ferry from Copenhagen to Oslo and took photographs of "sensitive" locations, there had been an unsuccessful attempt to charge him under anti-terrorism legislation.

Mansour was officially charged on August 17, 2006. The judge in his trial, Jens Stausbol, claimed that the evidence against Mansour was "indisputable". He ordered that all material produced by Mansour's Al Nur organization be confiscated. Some of this material had turned up during terror raids carried out in Germany and Italy. When he was sentenced, Mansour said :Allahu Ackbar" or "God is Great".

After his trial today, defense lawyer Gitte Juul Jensen said: "It really gives you something to think about, that it's possible to be convicted when you are so far away from the crime. It's starting to get political when you compare Islamism and terrorism."

There is no doubt that Mansour incited terrorism, and under Denmark's 2002 anti-terrorism laws, this is a crime. He could have served six years. The prosecution had argued for a three year and nine month sentence. Because of the time that Mansour has already served in custody awaiting trial, he will be free in two years' time.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at April 11, 2007 7:21 AM

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Posted by: DH at April 11, 2007 10:02 AM

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