Former ministers reveal terror threats against Copenhagen

Former justice ministers Frank Jensen and Brian Mikkelsen have disclosed previously unknown details of concrete terror threats against Copenhagen, DR reports.

Jensen said he was told about a bomb threat against a packed Parken stadium during the Uefa Cup final on 17 May 2000, when around 40,000 fans were attending. Mikkelsen said that, during his time as justice minister, authorities received a concrete and alarming terror threat against Nørreport Station, Denmark’s busiest railway station.

The former ministers shared the information on the P1 podcast Svingdøren.

“We knew that at some point there would be a very imminent terror threat against Nørreport Station,” Mikkelsen said. He was justice minister from September 2008 to February 2010, in the years after the publication of the Muhammad cartoons led to several plans for Islamist terror attacks against Denmark, particularly Copenhagen.

Mikkelsen said he was on his way to Rome for a weekend trip when he discussed with the head of the Ministry of Justice whether he should cancel his plans.

“I simply could not leave Denmark. But we also agreed that if I changed my travel plans, someone might notice,” he said. He went ahead with the trip, knowing there was “a gigantic threat against Danish society”, and remained in constant contact.

Jensen agreed that serving as justice minister involved having to make decisions about serious events that were unknown to the public.

“We both have a great deal of concrete events in our baggage where we are the last person who has to decide what should be done,” Jensen said.

Jensen was justice minister from 1997 to 2001. On 17 May 2000, he was due to attend the Uefa Cup final at Parken with Hanne Bech Hansen, then head of Copenhagen Police. Before the match, violent clashes had broken out in the city between supporters of the finalists, English club Arsenal and Turkish club Galatasaray.

Jensen said he was then informed of the bomb threat and asked whether the match should be cancelled. The authorities decided to hold the event. Jensen and Bech Hansen were instructed that, if something happened, they should lean back so they could be pulled out of the stadium over the back of their seats.

Other terror plots against Denmark were uncovered before they could be carried out, including the Glasvej case in 2007, plans targeting Jyllands-Posten in 2010 and a plot by Chechen bomber Lors Doukajev, whose plan at Hotel Jørgensen in Copenhagen was thwarted that same year. In 2015, attacks at the Krudttønden cultural venue and a synagogue in Copenhagen killed filmmaker Finn Nørgaard and volunteer security guard Dan Uzan.