A 17-year-old girl was found guilty by a court of having planned to commit acts of Islamist terrorism in Denmark. “The entire jury and all judges have reached the same result,” Presiding Judge Peder Johs Christensen said.
The girl, who was 15 years old at the time of her arrest in January 2016 and has been remanded in custody for 16 months, planned to used explosives to attack two schools, one of them a Jewish school in the capital Copenhagen, the court found.
The teenager was born and raised in Denmark. She converted to Islam in 2015, some months before her arrest. "Right now it seems Islamism is her everything. As long as that's the case, then I think she's dangerous," the prosecutor told the court in Holbaek. He added that the girl had been inspired by the terrorist who killed a security guard outside Copenhagen's synagogue in February 2015 and that the teen looked up to the gunman, Omar El-Hussein.
During the trial, at which she pleaded innocent, she was described as having undergone a drastic change in interests from boys and shopping to holy war in the space of just a few months.
Although police found chemicals that can be used to make explosives at her home, she had not succeeded in actually making bombs. However, the court ruled that there was “a punishable attempt at terrorism, since it was her intention to bring a bomb to two schools and detonate it.”
Sentencing was due on Wednesday. The prosecution has requested the girl be imprisoned indefinitely.
