One of three suspected terrorists has been released by the Supreme Court in Norway after an attempt by the police to keep him in custody was rejected. David Jakobsen, a 32-year-old Uzbek national, was released by the court on Friday 15 October after it was decided that he does not put the ongoing investigation in jeopardy and is not a flight risk.
Jakobsen was arrested along with two other men on 8th July in connection with what US and Norwegian officials think was a scheme linked to a thwarted al-Qaida plot to carry out terrorist attacks in New York and the UK. Jakobsen acted as a police informant in the case but still faces charges due to events that took place before he spoke to police last year.
The suspected ringleader, Mikael Davud, and another man, Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak Bujak, will remain in custody after admitting to some of the charges but giving conflicting statements about their proposed targets. All three men were living in Norway at the time of their arrests.
According to Davud’s lawyers, the group planned to attack the Chinese Embassy in Oslo as Davud is an Uighur who believes Xinjiang, an autonomous region in China, is his homeland. Bujak, an Iraqi Kurd, however, says they planned to attack the offices of Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten which printed cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed in 2005.