"A British al-Qaida sympathiser living in Derby volunteered last year to help with a terrorist attack on targets in Denmark including the offices of the newspaper that published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, secret documents obtained by the Guardian reveal. A second British man is alleged to have handed over cash for the plot.

The two men were visited in August 2009 by David Headley, an extremist born in Pakistan but raised in the US, where he is now in custody. Headley, who was arrested two months later, was working for Ilyas Kashmiri, a senior Pakistani militant with links to al-Qaida.

Kashmiri, whom al-Qaida leadership figures have named as part of Osama bin Laden's group, told Headley to focus on a plan to attack the offices of the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which had published controversial cartoons of the prophet in 2005. He gave Headley $1500 (£954) to finance a surveillance trip. More general attacks in Denmark were also discussed. Headley said he understood that they might involve suicide bombings.

According to the documents, Kashmiri told Headley the two men in Derby – who were originally from Kotli, in north-east Pakistan – would help him. It transpired that one of the men had fallen out with Kashmiri, accusing the militant leader of allowing his son to steal funds for jihad, but he did agree to provide money for the mission; the other man "was available" for the attacks in Denmark, the documents reveal. These are based on 34 hours of interviews with Headley conducted by Indian investigators this summer.

They also describe in detail how Headley, having been deeply involved with the Lashkar-e-Taiba group in Pakistan and having conducted repeated surveillance trips for the Mumbai attacks, became involved with Kashmiri and, at one remove, al-Qaida. After spending six years with Lashkar, Headley said he became "mentally distanced" from the group and felt that the global agenda of Kashmiri and al-Qaida suited him better."

Lars Løkke Rasmussen

Prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen responded strongly today to an opposition proposal to create ghetto police teams, saying that the problem goes much deeper than police intervention. Rasmussen said the ghettos are so far removed from mainstream Danish society that it requires more than just a get-tough attitude on crime.

‘What it comes down to is that we have some areas where you can ask yourself the question whether it is Denmark at all,’ he said today during his weekly press conference. ‘Because Danish is only spoken by a minority in these places. Because children are allowed to play out in the street at night. Because Danish standards regarding security, equal rights, the legal system and respect for public authority don’t exist there.’

Police Commissioner Jens Espensen of the Gellerup neighborhood police says: "We increasingly see a parallel justice system, that is run completely outside Danish laws and regulations. Things are settled by which families are strongest, and who has the most money, together with threats and blackmail. If this is allowed to continue, the young people in these areas will never learn to accept and respect the justice system in Denmark." (I don't think they do it now....).

These cases constantly take on new forms, says the police.

In Køge (Copenhagen suburb) the police have several examples where young criminals occupied the apartments of sick, elderly or otherwise vulnerable residents, who were threatened not to call for help.

The cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that sparked protests worldwide four years ago will be republished in a new book soon.

Staffers at Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten said the cartoons will be in a book created by cultural editor Flemming Rose and will be titled "The Tyranny of Silence."

Rose could not be reached for comment.

The book is scheduled to hit stores on September 30, staffers said.

A bombing suspect who is accused of blowing up a hotel toilet in Copenhagen, along with himself, is a one-legged amateur boxer who was born in insurgency-racked Chechnya and has shown what one scholar calls "highly professional" tradecraft in concealing his identity and purpose from Danish authorities.

The would-be bomber's target, Danish police said, was likely the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world in 2006 by publishing 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad and has been the object of at least one foiled terrorist attack since.

"We are reasonably sure that was the target," Chief Superintendent Svend Foldager of the Copenhagen police, the lead investigator in the case, said at a briefing Friday.

"We're dealing with a letter bomb," said Mr. Foldager, adding that the parcel contained small steel pellets designed to maximize casualties and would have exploded with a force of a small hand grenade. "It was capable of injuring a lot of people, depending on where it exploded."

Mr. Foldager also said the device used triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, a volatile acetone-based explosive used by al Qaeda in the July 2005 London subway bombings and other attacks.