COPENHAGEN — A Chechen-born man was charged with terrorism by Danish prosecutors on Tuesday for allegedly preparing a letter bomb that had likely been intended for a newspaper known for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Denmark’s top prosecutor, Joergen Steen Soerensen, said Lors Doukayev had wanted to “seriously frighten the population” and destabilize the country.
The explosive device went off as Doukayev was assembling it in a Copenhagen hotel last September. It was filled with steel pellets and contained triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, which terrorists used in bombs that killed 52 people in London in 2005.
Doukayev, a boxer born in Chechnya and currently a resident of Belgium, received cuts on his face. No one else was injured.
Doukayev was arrested in a park near the hotel shortly after the small blast.
If found guilty he faces a life sentence, though generally this is reduced in Denmark to 16 years in prison.
A trial is set to start May 16.
Denmark’s intelligence service has said Doukayev was likely operating alone and was not part of a wider network.
The Danish Security and Intelligence Service says the Scandinavian country remains in the cross-hairs of Islamist terrorists because of Jyllands-Posten’s cartoons, which were reprinted by a range of Western papers and have ignited a tense debate about freedom of speech and religious sensitivities.
Four men were arrested in Copenhagen on Dec. 29 on suspicion of planning a shooting spree inside the Copenhagen offices of the Jyllands-Posten.