Danish Police Say Death Plot Foiled

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From Bloomberg: Danish police arrested three suspects in an alleged plot to murder one of 12 cartoonists whose caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005 sparked riots in Muslim communities around the world. Denmark's Security and Intelligence Service, PET, detained two Tunisians and a 40-year-old Dane with a Moroccan background at 4:30 a.m. local time today in Aarhus, where Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper that commissioned the cartoons, is based. "The purpose of the clampdown was to prevent a terror-related homicide," PET chief Jakob Scharf said in an e-mailed statement. "The clampdown occurred after a long period of surveillance."

The detainees are suspected of planning to kill Kurt Westergaard, 73, who provided the newspaper with a cartoon of Muhammad wearing a bomb in his turban. The cartoons, and the efforts of a Danish Muslim delegation in the Middle East to draw attention to their publication, led to consumer boycotts of Danish goods and the torching of Danish embassies. "I fear for my life, when the police tell me there are certain people who are working with concrete plans to kill me," Jyllands-Posten cited Westergaard as saying today. "I think the aftermath of this insane reaction will last as long as I live. It's sad, but those are the terms under which I now live."

"This case unfortunately shows that in Denmark also there are groups of extremists who don't recognize or respect the basic principles the Danish society is built on," Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in an e-mailed statement. "The government takes very seriously all attacks on freedom of speech," Rasmussen added. "In Denmark, one not only has the freedom to think and speak, but also to draw what one chooses."

Westergaard has been under police protection since receiving death threats after the drawings were published, according to Jyllands-Posten's editor-in-chief, Carsten Juste. The newspaper has received bomb threats and its journalists have been subjected to "countless death threats," Juste told broadcaster TV2 today. "This doesn't change in any way my perception that we need to work against dark forces that want to fight against freedom of speech," Juste said.

The Tunisians will face deportation "because they must be seen as posing danger to the security of the state," Scharf said. The two will remain in custody until they leave Denmark, he said. Because PET made the arrests "in an early phase" of the alleged plot, to avoid "unnecessary risks," the service expects to release the Danish citizen after a first court hearing, Scharf said. PET would seek to have the Dane jailed to await trial if evidence emerges that indicates the investigation should continue, he said.

The suspects planned to kill Westergaard in his home, Jyllands-Posten said. Westergaard told TV2 in a telephone interview that he was first informed of the plot by PET in November and has since moved several times, including to addresses outside Denmark. "We have warned that the situation could get out of control," Kasem Said Ahmad, a spokesman for a Muslim organization, the Islamic Community in Denmark, told TV2. "We want a decent tone between Muslims and Danes. But we maintain our view that the cartoons were provocative."

Denmark's Royal Library on January 30th said it was in talks to acquire the 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. The library said it would treat the cartoons as it does the books in its collection, and would allow patrons to sign to view them. "It would be natural for us to have them at the Royal Library," Jytte Kjaergaard, a spokeswoman for the Copenhagen-based institution, said. "We don't perceive them as works of art. We don't have any view on their substance or content. Our view is that they hold a place in our cultural heritage. The cartoons have become a part of Danish history."