Cartoon row: Two found guilty of ‘terrorist plot’

Bujak gestures in a courthouse in Oslo January 30, 2012. Bujak was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for planning an act of terror in Denmark. PHOTO: REUTERS

OSLO: An Oslo court on Monday jailed two men for planning to bomb the Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), in Norway’s first-ever guilty verdict for plotting terrorism.

Norwegian national Mikael Davud, a member of China’s Uighur minority and considered the mastermind behind the plot against the Jyllands-Posten daily, was sentenced to seven years behind bars.

Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak, an Iraqi Kurd residing in Norway, received a three-and-a-half-year prison term.

The two men were found guilty of planning to blow up the offices of the Danish newspaper that in September 2005 published 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

The judges said the prosecution had proved “beyond any doubt that Davud knowingly and voluntarily plotted with al Qaeda to carry out a bomb attack against Jyllands-Posten with a bomb that was so powerful that he understood human life could be lost.”

Published in The Express Tribune, January 31^st, 2012.