Archive for the “Muhammad Caricatures” Category
Danish Muhammad Cartoonist Kurt Westergaard
Kurt Westergaard’s, the Danish Cartoonist made famous by his depiction of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb on his head, attacker, Mohamed Geele, went to trial today.
A 29-year-old Somali man charged with trying to kill the cartoonist behind the most controversial Danish Prophet Mohammed caricature went on trial Wednesday in the central town of Aarhus.
The man, named in court as Mohamed Geele, could face life in prison if convicted of the charges of attempted terrorism, attempted murder, attacking a police officer and illegal arms possession.
The hearing was transferred to a larger court due to the number of journalists covering the case.
On January 1 last year, the suspect broke into the home of cartoonist Kurt Westergaard — who had drawn the Prophet Mohammed with a bomb-shaped turban — wielding an axe and saying he wanted to kill him.
Westergaard, now 75, rushed into a bathroom that had been fortified and transformed into a panic room to “seek safety and call the police.”
Police shot the man twice and wounded him before placing him under arrest.
Since his arrest the Somali has denied any wrongdoing, but according to Danish intelligence police, he is believed to be close to the Shebab Islamist movement, which has declared allegiance to Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network and controls most of southern and central Somalia.
The trial is set to last nine days and the verdict is expected in the first week of February.
Mohamed Geele has denied the charges of attempted murder and terrorism.
Kurt Westergaard is expected to testify tomorrow under heavy security.
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Danish Muhammad Cartoonist Kurt Westergaard
You remember the story about the axe-wielding Somali who busted into Westergarrd’s home.
Danish police intelligence said they believed the “attempted assassination … is terror related” and accused the man, who was not named, of having links with Somalia’s al-Shabaab militant group as well as al Qaeda militants.
The cartoonist, 74, pushed a panic button, fled to a safe room and was unhurt when police arrived. His grand-daughter was in the house during the attack. Police could not confirm reports he had tried to break down the safe room door with the axe.
Westergaard, who in 2005 depicted Prophet Mohammad with a bomb in his turban, has been under police protection since his caricatures of the Prophet led to death threats.
The Somali man appeared in court on a stretcher with a hand and leg in plaster casts due to gunshot wounds from a police officer who had narrowly dodged the axe thrown at him by the intruder who was trying to evade arrest, police said.
The accused did not speak in court, but denied the charges through his lawyer.
The Security and Intelligence Service PET, a department of the national police, said in a statement: “It is PET’s impression that the attempted assassination of the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard is terror related.”
The man, the PET said, “has close relations to the Somali terror organization al-Shabaab and al Qaeda leaders in East Africa, and he is also suspected of having been involved in terror-related activities during his stay in East Africa.”
It also accused him of involvement in a terror-related network with links to Denmark, where he has a residence permit.
Well, this week the 75 year old cartoonist will face the Somali terrorist who attempted to murder him on New Years Day in 2010 – a year ago.
Westergaard and his granddaughter were unharmed.
“I got away. But he’s the real victim, who is likely going to sit behind bars for quite a while and will have enough time to think through what happened,” Westergaard told AP this week about the intruder, a 29-year-old Somali man charged with terrorism and attempted murder.
The defendant, who cannot be named under a court order, denies the charges, his lawyer Niels Christian Straus said. He declined to say what his client was doing at Westergaard’s house, saying he’ll explain it as the trial begins at the city court in Aarhus, Denmark’s second largest city.
If convicted of terror, the defendant could face life in prison, although such sentences are generally reduced to 16 years under Danish law.
Westergaard’s security was ramped up even further after the break-in. Police temporarily moved him and his wife from their house in Aarhus. He’s now permanently escorted by earpiece-wearing bodyguards from PET, the Danish security service.
They are sure to accompany him to the court hearings, which are expected to draw large crowds. Westergaard is scheduled to testify on Thursday.
He said he was glad that the trial was finally getting started, so he could get on with his life, even though the infamous cartoon will forever be a part of it.
“The drawing will follow me into my retirement home and later to my tomb,” Westergaard said.
Here is the famous drawing:
Tags: Kurt_Westergaard, Muhammad_Cartoons
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Three of the suspects appeared in a Danish court on Thursday morning
Go to jail, directly to jail, do not pass go and do not collect $200.
A Swedish court on Thursday remanded in custody a fourth suspect in a plot to kill staff at a Danish newspaper after three others were earlier detained by a Danish court, the prosecution said.
Sahbi Zalouti, a 37-year-old Swede of Tunisian origin who was arrested in Stockholm Wednesday, was remanded in custody for two weeks “suspected of preparing terrorist crimes,” it said in a statement.
The Attunda district court in the Sollentuna suburb of Stockholm, which issued its ruling following a closed-door hearing, also placed a gag order on everyone involved in the case, the statement added.
Under Swedish law, which requires a court to review custody orders every two weeks, the prosecutor in the case Tomas Lindstrand has until 11:00 am (1000 GMT) on January 13 to charge Zalouti or to request an extension.
Three men were also remanded in custody by the Glostrup court near Copenhagen earlier Thursday, for four weeks, in connection with the suspected plot.
A total of five are suspected of hatching what Danish officials called a plan to “kill as many people as possible” in an imminent assault on the Copenhagen offices of the Jyllands-Posten daily.
Here is the BBC account of the arraignment of the suspects.
Three remanded into custody in Denmark and one in Sweden. One suspect was released in Denmark and one was to appear this afternoon in a Swedish court.
Who are they?
Denmark’s intelligence service, PET, only identified the three men remanded in custody as a 44-year-old Tunisian, a 29-year-old Swede born in Lebanon, and a 30-year-old Swede.
It said all three resided in Sweden and drove to the Copenhagen suburbs late Tuesday.
The Swedish tabloid Expressen meanwhile named the men on Thursday as Mounir Dhahri, Munir Awad and Omar Abdalla Aboelazm.
A fifth man, a 26-year-old Iraqi asylum-seeker who was arrested Wednesday in his apartment in the Greve suburb of Copenhagen, was reportedly released but was still believed to have been involved in the plot.
Stay tuned…….
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Offices of the Jyllands-Posten Newspaper which published the Muhammed Cartoons
An imminent terrorist plot against the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten who published the infamous Muhammed Cartoons was foiled today.
The Danish intelligence agency said Wednesday that it had arrested five men suspected of an “imminent” terror plot against the Danish newspaper that ran controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005.
The arrests come only a couple weeks after central Stockholm was rocked by two explosions that Swedish police have deemed a terror attack. The plots in the two Scandinavian countries are unusual because the region has been largely removed, until now, from the terrorism concerns that grip much of Western Europe.
Three of the men linked to the plot in Denmark are Swedish citizens and one of the five men arrested was arrested in Sweden, the New York Times reported. The men are not connected with the attack in Sweden, in which only the bomber was killed.
he men arrested in Denmark are a 44-year-old Tunisian, a 29-year-old Swede born in Lebanon, a 30-year-old Swede, and a 26-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker. The man arrested in Sweden was a 37-year-old Swede with Tunisian roots, Agence France-Presse reported. The Copenhagen Daily reports that the arrests stem from collaboration between Danish intelligence and Swedish law enforcement in a long-term surveillance operation.
The cartoons, published in 2005 in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, featured caricatures of the Prophet, which are considered blasphemous by most Muslims and prompted anger and violent rioting in some Muslim countries.
The men planned to kill as many as possible in the building housing the newspaper, the Copenhagen Daily reports.
The New York Times account of the “Mumbai-style” attack is here.
This is not the first time the newspaper or Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist who drew the Muhammed Cartoons. Remember the Somali who was linked to Radical Islamic al-Shabab and al Qaeda who tried to assassinate Westergaard with an axe?
And, the attack in Sweden may have been linked to another controversial caartoon.
…the e-mail threat connected to the attack references Lars Vilks, a Swedish cartoonist who drew caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad as a dog in 2007 in the Swedish newspaper Tidningarnas Telegrambyra, the Monitor reported.
“Now, your children — daughters and sisters — will die like our brothers and sisters and children die,” the recording said, according to the Times. “Our actions will speak for themselves. As long as you do not end your war against Islam and the insult against the prophet and your stupid support for that pig Vilks.”
Of course, there was security in the building just as Westergaard had a “panic room” installed in his residence.
The Jyllands-Posten building was already under high security before the arrests, said Lars Munch, the director of the newspaper’s corporate owner, on the newspaper’s Web site. He called the plot “appalling” and said the newspaper was cooperating with Danish police in their investigation.
Prime Minister Loekke Rasmussen of Denmark told reporters that he was “shocked” by the attack.
“Regardless of today’s event, it remains my conviction that terrorism must not lead us to change our open society and our values, especially democracy and free speech,” he said.
And, here are the cartoons that have created this “EXCUSE” for terrorist activities.
And, all of this for what?
Cartoons of Muhammad
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Tags: Jyllands-Posten, Kurt_Westergaard, Muhammed_Cartoons
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Muslims burn an effigy of cartoonist Molly Norris in Karachi, Pakistan, on May 26
A pretty sad commentary when someone wishes to support freedom of speech and expression.
A cartoonist for Seattle Weekly in Washington state is in hiding after she received death threats for mocking the Prophet Mohammed five months ago, the newspaper reported. The alternative weeklys editor in chief reported this week that artist Molly Norris is going ghost on the advice of FBI security specialists. She will be moving and changing her name, Mark Fefer wrote.
You may have noticed that Molly Norris comic is not in the paper this week. Thats because there is no more Molly, he said. She is, in effect, being put into a witness-protection program except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab.
Norris hasty exodus stems from an April controversy in which the creators of South Park saw their 201st episode censored over its inclusion of Mohammed as a character. Creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker received death threats because their 200th episode featured the Muslim prophet in a bear suit.
Norris dedicated her cartoon that week to Stone and Parker and attacked bloggers at Revolution Muslim, who she said made threats against the South Park masterminds. Couching the cartoon as a First Amendment protest, she accused the Comedy Central network of cooperating with terrorists for pulling the original episode.
This is what started the flap, as you remember.
As a snarky response to Muslim bloggers who warned Comedy Central about an episode of South Park showing the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bear suit, one Seattle cartoonist, who calls laughter her form of prayer, is asking artists all over the world to create depictions of Mohammed on May 20, then submit the images to a Facebook page she set up.
Tags: Molly_Norris, Muhammad_Caricatures
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Danish Muhammad Cartoonist Kurt Westergaard
Kurt Westergaard is retired now but continues to draw honors for freedom of speech.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised the bravery of a Danish cartoonist who caricatured the Prophet Muhammad at an award ceremony honoring his achievements for freedom of speech.
In her speech praising illustrator Kurt Westergaard, “who has had to fear for his life since the publication of the cartoons in 2005,” Merkel emphasized Wednesday that media freedom is an important element of rights in Europe.
“It does not matter if we think his cartoons are tasteful or not, if we think they are necessary and helping or not,” Merkel said at the ceremony in the city of Potsdam. The question, she said, was, “Is he allowed to do this? Yes, he is.”
There have been at least three attempted attacks on the 75-year-old Westergaard or his newspaper, the Danish the Jyllands-Posten, since he and 11 other artists angered Muslims around the world by creating the Muhammad cartoons four years ago. Protesters in Muslim countries have torched Danish and other Western embassies.
Westergaard’s cartoon, which he said took 45 minutes to draw, was considered by many Muslims the most offensive of the 12. He has rejected calls to apologize, saying poking fun at religious symbols is protected by Denmark’s freedom of speech.
The cartoon:
Of course, not everyone was pleased.
Merkel’s appearance at the award ceremony drew criticism from Muslim groups, who perceived it as an endorsement of Westergaard’s cartoon. Aiman Mazyek, general secretary of Germany’s Muslim Council, told public radio Deutschlandradio that Merkel is honoring the cartoonist who sullied “our Prophet … and thereby all Muslims.”
Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, rejected the criticism and said Merkel’s message was to underscore the importance of freedom of speech.
Westergaard continues to live under police protection.
Tags: Kurt_Westergaard, Muhammed_Caricatures
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Afghan protesters step on a U.S. flag during a demonstration against the United States, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Sept. 6, 2010. Hundreds of Afghans railed against the U.S. and called for President Barack Obama’s death at a rally in the capital Monday to denounce an American church’s plans to burn the Islamic holy book on 9/11.
General David Petraeus is probably right about the burning of the Koran stirring up the radical Islamic community. And, I do not advocate this type of behavior in the least. The church would be best NOT to do this.
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said the planned burning of Qurans on Sept. 11 by a small Florida church could put the lives of American troops in danger and damage the war effort.
Gen. David Petraeus said the Taliban would exploit the demonstration for propaganda purposes, drumming up anger toward the U.S. and making it harder for allied troops to carry out their mission of protecting Afghan civilians.
“It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort,” Gen. Petraeus said in an interview. “It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems. Not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community.”
Hundreds of Afghans attended a demonstration in Kabul on Monday to protest the plans of Florida pastor Terry Jones, who has said he will burn copies of Islam’s holy book to mark the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Afghan protesters chanted “death to America,” and speakers called on the U.S. to withdraw its troops. Some protesters threw rocks at a passing military convoy.
So, I agree with John.
But, military commanders advising Americans on their First Amendment rights is troubling to me – deeply troubling and is unacceptable. General Petraeus is in Afghanistan to fight for American freedoms and support the United States Constitution not to subvert them.
Next, will the General say that I am endangering Americans for printing this cartoon of Mohammed?
I mean there were world-wide protests and loss of lives because of radical Islam’s insistence that there not be any criticism of Mohammed or his image depiction.
But, you see, the United States Constitution guarantees my right to publish this cartoon and to discuss it. No military general and certainly no politician or government authority can take away this right.
The Afghanistan War has not been going well and President Obama has been struggling with its mission. Hence, General Petraeus has been sent to essentially clean up the mess.
I would recommend that General Petraeus concentrate less on narrowing American’s rights and more on finding and neutralizing radical Islamic terrorists that wish me, my family, my fellow Americans and American troops harm.
Tags: David_Petraeus
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