2 Charged in Attempt to Kill Danish Cartoonist, Editor
By Rob Tornoe | October 28th, 2009 | PERMALINK
Kurt Westergaard's 2005 caricature of the Prophet Muhammad.
Two Chicago men have been arrested for allegedly plotting to kill a Danish newspaper’s cartoonist and cultural editor for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad back in 2005.
FBI agents arrested David Headley en route to Pakistan earlier this month, and the Chicago Sun-Times reports that he held an additional airline reservation - to Copenhagen.
Headley’s friend, Tahawwur Hussain Rana, who shared an extreme hatred for cartoons that depicted the prophet Mohammed, arranged for the flight, authorities said.
More from the New York Times:
The FBI said they regarded the case as significant because Mr. Headley traveled to Pakistan and consulted closely with three Pakistani men identified in an F.B.I. affidavit as members of Harakat-ul Jihad Islami, a terrorist group affiliated with Al Qaeda, with whom he referred to the plot as the “Mickey Mouse Project.â€
12 cartoons were published back in 2005 in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten as a way to fight against self-censorship in Europe due to violent threats from groups from the Muslim minority.
The most controversial of the 12 cartoons depicted Mohammed wearing a bomb with a lit fuse as a turban. That cartoon was drawn by Kurt Westergaard, 78, who along with cultural editor Flemming Rose, were targeted for assassination, authorities said.
There have been numerous flair-ups since the cartoons original publication, including a February 2008 incident where Danish police arrested three men suspected of planning to assassinate Westergaard, who has remained under police protection.
Back in August, officials at Yale University Press removed reproductions of the 12 cartoons from their book, “The Cartoons that Shook the World,” drawing criticism that Yale was giving in to intimidation.
Here is the full-page, including all 12 Mohammed cartoons, that appeared in Jyllands-Posten back in 2005 (click to enlarge):
Comments
Comment from Pedram Kazemi-Esfarjani
Time January 1, 2010 at 8:17 pm
May the new decade 2010-2020 be the decade of defeating the militant Islam: tonight around 10pm the newspaper editorial cartoonist Kurt Westergaard’s hourse was attacked by a muslim with an axe trying to attack Kurt while he had was babysiting a grandchild and if not Kurt and the child had been able to run fast enough into his “panic room”, a secured room built in his home, he would not have survived and would have ended like the translator of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses Hitoshi Igarashi, 44 years old, an assistant professor of comparative culture, who was cut into pieces by devout muslims, probably an Iranian death squad. That was in 1991, and still in 2010 we experience the same war waged on freedom of speech, art and satire! We have to end this Islamic jihad, they won’t stop voluntarily.
Comment from Alec Hosterman
Time October 28, 2009 at 5:11 pm
I remember when the controversy started about the cartoons. I was in shock. “A cartoon did that?” I tell my students the stories about the riots and they’re also amazed.