Last friday a small explosive device detonated in the bathroom of a little hotel in the middle of Copenhagen.
A man hurried out of the bathroom and out of the hotel... a few hours later he was captured in Ørsteds park about 1/2 a mile from the hotel.
The police held him on the ground for about 4 hours until a bomb squad robot could shoot a small fanny pack he had around his waist.
Turns out it contained an MP3 player - not even a boom box! I
n the first stages of the investigation authorities tried to downplay the terror angle... perhaps it was just a suicidal weirdo.
But as more information has trickled out to the media it becomes clear to me that the Danish police have captured an experienced professional terrorist.
The concensus among experts is that the mystery bomber probably was planning to send a letter bomb to Jyllands Posten - publishers of the muhammad cartoon series. (Had he posted it Friday it would have detonated on 9/11).
He most likely was not a suicide bomber as he had purchased a bus ticket to leave for Belgium later that same Friday.
He was travelling with authentic Belgian identity papers that belong to someone else... he is 169 cm tall... perhaps North African... speaks French, German and English... his French was good enough to convince a Frenchman he met at the hotel that he was from Luxembourg... in the few days he was in Copenhagen he used 3 different identities and changed his appearance at least 3 times... he had no mobil phone... used no credit cards.
It turns out he used a high quality prosthetic leg (great hiding place!) which authorities hoped would lead to his identity - if he used his real ID as a patient.
It turns out he had removed the serial numbers from the internal frame of the leg.
The man is now being held in isolation - Denmark's own private Guantanamo - he is not cooperating with invesatigators and the police are not allowed to interrogate him until he is charged and equipped with a lawyer.
Who is this person? A rogue agent acting on his own? Perhaps. But I believe he is part of a network - perhaps the same Belgian al Qaeda cell that assasinated Ahmed Shah Massoud.
A man hurried out of the bathroom and out of the hotel... a few hours later he was captured in Ørsteds park about 1/2 a mile from the hotel.
The police held him on the ground for about 4 hours until a bomb squad robot could shoot a small fanny pack he had around his waist.
Turns out it contained an MP3 player - not even a boom box! I
n the first stages of the investigation authorities tried to downplay the terror angle... perhaps it was just a suicidal weirdo.
But as more information has trickled out to the media it becomes clear to me that the Danish police have captured an experienced professional terrorist.
The concensus among experts is that the mystery bomber probably was planning to send a letter bomb to Jyllands Posten - publishers of the muhammad cartoon series. (Had he posted it Friday it would have detonated on 9/11).
He most likely was not a suicide bomber as he had purchased a bus ticket to leave for Belgium later that same Friday.
He was travelling with authentic Belgian identity papers that belong to someone else... he is 169 cm tall... perhaps North African... speaks French, German and English... his French was good enough to convince a Frenchman he met at the hotel that he was from Luxembourg... in the few days he was in Copenhagen he used 3 different identities and changed his appearance at least 3 times... he had no mobil phone... used no credit cards.
It turns out he used a high quality prosthetic leg (great hiding place!) which authorities hoped would lead to his identity - if he used his real ID as a patient.
It turns out he had removed the serial numbers from the internal frame of the leg.
The man is now being held in isolation - Denmark's own private Guantanamo - he is not cooperating with invesatigators and the police are not allowed to interrogate him until he is charged and equipped with a lawyer.
Who is this person? A rogue agent acting on his own? Perhaps. But I believe he is part of a network - perhaps the same Belgian al Qaeda cell that assasinated Ahmed Shah Massoud.
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