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Bust in Terror Plot to Kill Danish Cartoonist

Danish secret services make midnight arrests

By Lucas Laursen,  Newser Staff

Posted Feb 12, 2008 7:29 AM CST

(Newser) – Danish police this morning arrested several people suspected of plotting to assassinate a cartoonist who had offended Muslims with a cartoon insulting the prophet Mohammed. The newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which published a set of controversial cartoons in 2005, said the attempt was against one of 12 illustrators, Kurt Westergaard, who drew the prophet wearing a bomb with a lit fuse as a turban.

Westergaard, now under police protection, said “the impact of the insane response to my cartoon will last for the rest of my life.” He said he has "turned fear into anger and indignation." The secret service “decided to intervene at a very early stage in order to interrupt the planning and the actual assassination," said an official. The caricatures prompted demonstrations around the world after other newspapers reprinted them in early 2006.

Muslims Protest Danish Caricatures.
Muslims Protest Danish Caricatures.   (Getty Images)
Demonstrations against the 2005 Danish Mohammed cartoons.
Demonstrations against the 2005 Danish Mohammed cartoons.   (Getty Images)
Pakistani Muslims torch a Danish flag during a demonstration against the infamous Danish cartoons in Karachi, ths February 23, 2006 file photo. (RIZWAN TABASSUM/AFP/Getty Images)
Pakistani Muslims torch a Danish flag during a demonstration against the infamous Danish cartoons in Karachi, ths February 23, 2006 file photo. (RIZWAN TABASSUM/AFP/Getty Images)   (Getty Images)
Pakistani activists of the six-party religious Islamic alliance Muttahida Majlis-e Amal (MMA) hold a burning Danish flag during a demonstration in Lahore, in this February 10, 2006 file photo. Thousands of Islamic hardliners burned Danish and US flags and chanted angry slogans during a march there against the publication of...
Pakistani activists of the six-party religious Islamic alliance Muttahida Majlis-e Amal (MMA) hold a burning Danish flag during a demonstration in Lahore, in this February 10, 2006 file photo. Thousands...   (Getty Images)
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