On Wednesday Danish police arrested twenty people during a series of co-ordinated raids across the country, aimed at preventing a suspected Islamist terrorist attack. According to information released by police and Denmark’s Security and Intelligence Service, the detainees were suspected of plotting to carry out a terrorist attack, the V4 news agency reported.

Representatives of the security service told a joint press conference that the suspects “have procured things to make explosives and have tried to acquire weapons.”

These twenty people have tried to get hold of firearms and have purchased materials needed to make explosives. It is important to underline that all those searched for have been apprehended, Copenhagen Police Chief Jorgen Bergen Skov said.

Flemming Drejer, the operative head of the Denmark’s Security and Intelligence Service, said the those arrested were suspected to have been “driven by a militant, Islamist motive”.

Authorities also revealed on Thursday that the terrorist group had ties in Norway. Trond Hugubakken, communications director of Norway’s domestic police intelligence agency (PST), has confirmed NRK’s information that a man in his 20s, arrested in September on suspicion of terrorism, had been in contact with the group detained in Denmark. He was unwilling to comment on either the suspect’s role or any other circumstance regarding the case.