CHICAGO - TWO Chicago men who were schoolmates in Pakistan plotted terrorist attacks against a Danish newspaper that triggered widespread protests by printing cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, federal prosecutors said on Tuesday in announcing charges against the men.

David Coleman Headley, 49, travelled to Denmark in January and July to conduct surveillance on possible targets, including the Copenhagen and Aarhus offices of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, prosecutors said in criminal complaints filed in US District Court in Chicago. Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 48, helped arrange Headley's travel, prosecutors said.

According to US prosecutors, Headley visited the newspaper's Copenhagen offices in January and told employees he represented Rana's business, First World Immigration Services, and that the business was considering opening offices in Denmark and might buy advertising.

While in Denmark, Headley asked Rana to watch for a follow-up e-mail from an advertising representative from the paper and to ask First World's Toronto and New York offices to 'remember' him in case the newspaper called, prosecutors said.

They said Rana corresponded with a newspaper representative and posed as Headley.

Prosecutors said Headley told FBI agents after his Oct 3 arrest at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport that the initial plan called for attacks on the newspaper's offices, but that he later proposed just killing the paper's former cultural editor and the cartoonist behind the drawings, which triggered outrage throughout the Muslim world. -- AP