Trial begins over plot to attack paper for Muhammad cartoon

THREE men accused in Norway of an al-Qaida-linked plot to attack a Danish newspaper that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad pleaded not guilty to terror charges at the start of a trial seen as a key test of Norway’s anti-terror laws.

Mikael Davud, Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak and David Jakobsen had been under surveillance for more than a year when authorities moved to arrest them in July 2010.

Norwegian investigators, who co-operated with US counterparts, say the defendants were building a bomb in a basement laboratory in a plot linked to the same al-Qaida planners behind 2009 schemes to blow up New York’s subway and a British shopping mall.