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TERRORISM

Norway charges man for planning terror in Denmark

A 24-year-old man from Norway’s Telemark county has been charged on three counts of being an accomplice in planning terror attacks.

Norway charges man for planning terror in Denmark
File photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix

The attacks would have taken place in locations including Denmark and London, Norway’s national broadcaster NRK reports.

The man was apprehended after chat messages were discovered in which he planned the attacks with a second, unknown person, according to the report.

He has also been charged with being connected to the Islamic State (Isis) terror group.

Public prosecutor Geir Evanger said that police in the UK were able to thwart a planned attack in London and that another attack was planned in Denmark, both by the suspect.

“Charges have been brought against a person for three attempts at participating in terror (attacks),” Evanger told NRK.

The charges against the man relate to his activity online, rather than physical terror activities, according to the prosecutor.

“We believe that this is part of the new form of participation in Isis. It is based on sharing extremist material, violent material and material with religious content,” Evanger said. The prosecutor added that police consider the man to have acted as an administrator for a large number of extremist online communities.

Police also suspect the man of sharing Isis propaganda and other material produced by the terror group.

According to the official charges, he shared instructions for making petrol bombs in the chat messages and said that Denmark would become “the new France”.

The attacks in Denmark were planned in March and April 2019 and would have been committed by one or more Danish national, according to NRK’s report.

The man is also suspected of making a video in which he encouraged others to commit violent attacks in Denmark.

The charges against him could result in a 21-year prison sentence if he is found guilty, according to police.

The 24-year-old, who has been in police custody for some time, denies the charges.

Terror, cyber-attacks and espionage: These are the biggest threats to Norway’s security

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CRIME

Surgeon fined for trying to sell Paris terror attack victim’s x-ray

A Paris court on Wednesday convicted a surgeon for trying to sell an X-Ray image of a wounded arm of a woman who survived the 2015 terror attacks in the French capital.

Surgeon fined for trying to sell Paris terror attack victim's x-ray

Found guilty of violating medical secrecy, renowned orthopaedic surgeon Emmanuel Masmejean must pay the victim €5,000 or face two months in jail, judges ordered.

Masmejean, who works at the Georges-Pompidou hospital in western Paris, posted the image of a young woman’s forearm penetrated by a Kalashnikov bullet on marketplace Opensea in late 2021.

The site allows its roughly 20 million users to trade non-fungible tokens (NFTs) – certificates of ownership of an artwork that are stored on a “blockchain” similar to the technology used to secure cryptocurrencies.

In the file’s description, the surgeon wrote that the young woman he had operated on had “lost her boyfriend in the attack” on the Bataclan concert hall, the focus of the November 2015 gun and bomb assault in which jihadists killed 130 people.

The X-Ray image never sold for the asking price of $2,776, and was removed from Opensea after being revealed by investigative website Mediapart in January.

Masmejean claimed at a September court hearing that he had been carrying out an “experiment” by putting a “striking and historic medical image” online – while acknowledging that it had been “idiocy, a mistake, a blunder”.

The court did not find him guilty of two further charges of abuse of personal data and illegally revealing harmful personal information.

Nor was he barred from practicing as prosecutors had urged, with the lead judge saying it would be “disproportionate and inappropriate” to inflict such a “social death” on the doctor.

The victim’s lawyer Elodie Abraham complained of a “politically correct” judgement.

“It doesn’t bother anyone that there’s been such a flagrant breach of medical secrecy. It’s not a good message for doctors,” Abraham said.

Neither Masmejean, who has been suspended from his hospital job, nor the victim were present for Wednesday’s ruling.

The surgeon may yet face professional consequences after appearing before the French medical association in September, his lawyer Ivan Terel said.

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