Last update - 00:00 27/09/2006
Court orders 2 suspects in plot to attack Israeli Embassy in Norway held for 4 weeks
By The Associated Press
OSLO, Norway - Two suspects in an alleged plot to attack the U.S. or Israeli Embassy can be held in jail for four weeks while police finish their investigation, an appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The suspects were among four men arrested last week on suspicion of firing gunshots at Norway's main Jewish synagogue on September 17. No one was hurt in the attack, in which about a dozen shots were fired at the building before dawn.
The charges against all four men were elevated to plotting terrorism, based on a police recording of two of them talking about ways to attack either the U.S. or Israeli embassy.
All deny the charges, and their attorneys say there is no evidence their clients took any steps to prepare an attack.
A court last week had granted police permission to hold the two men who had the taped conversation - Arfan Qadeer Bhatti, 29, a Norwegian of Pakistani origin, and Andreas Bog Kristiansen, a 26-year-old Norwegian - for four weeks.
However, it said police could only hold 28-year-old Norwegian-Pakistani Mohammed Adnan Nabi for two weeks, and had to release the fourth suspect, Ibrahim Ozbabacan, a 28-year-old Norwegian of Turkish origin.
Police appealed that decision, and on Wednesday, the Borgarting superior court in Oslo said police could hold Nabi for four weeks rather than two. The court also ruled that police could hold Ozbabacan in custody for four weeks.