Denmark: Hotel Bomber Found Guilty of Terror

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) -- A Chechen-born man who set off an explosion in a Copenhagen hotel was convicted Monday of attempted terrorism.

The Copenhagen City Court said Lors Doukayev, a one-legged amateur boxer, was trying to assemble a letter bomb when it went off in a hotel bathroom on Sept. 10 last year.

Doukayev, a 25-year-old citizen and resident of Belgium, received cuts to his face in the explosion. No one else was injured.

Prosecutors said Doukayev, who pleaded innocent, was preparing the bomb to target a Danish newspaper which sparked fiery protests in Muslim countries by printing 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005. They believe his intention was for it to arrive on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

It dismissed Doukayev's claim that he carried the explosives for personal protection and was trying dismantle the bomb when it went off.

The device was filled with steel pellets and contained triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, which terrorists used in bombs that killed 52 people in London in 2005.

Wearing headphones, Doukayev listened quietly as the verdict was read and translated into French. He then smiled and waved to the interpreter.

Doukayev's defense lawyer, Niels Anker Rasmussen, said he was surprised by the verdict, but had not decided yet whether to appeal. A sentencing hearing was scheduled for Tuesday.