Denmark claims foiling attack on blasphemous cartoonist

COPENHAGEN—Danish police have arrested several people suspected of planning to attack one of the cartoonists who drew controversial caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed (PBHH) for Denmark’s biggest daily in 2005, police said Tuesday.
The Danish intelligence agency PET “conducted a police operation at 4:30 am (0330 GMT) in the Aarhus region, in cooperation with local police, to prevent a murder linked to terrorism,” PET chief Jakob Scharf said in a statement. The raid was carried out “after lengthy surveillance.”
PET did not indicate how many people had been arrested, nor their identities or nationalities, nor the identity of the cartoonist targetted in the plan. Public service Danmarks Radio said however that five people were arrested, including three Danish nationals. All five were of Muslim background, it said.
The online edition of Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which published the cartoons in its print edition in September 2005, meanwhile identified the caricaturist as Kurt Westergaard. Westergaard drew what was considered the most controversial of the drawings, featuring the prophet’s head with a turban looking like a bomb with a lit fuse.—Agencies