Denmark: police officer stops a man who tried to atack the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard

The Danish newspaper Politiken reported that “a man was arrested while trying to enter to Kurt Westergaard´s house in Aarhus, in western Denmark, the cartoonists of ‘Jyllands Posten’ and the one who made the cartoon of the Prophet Mahoma.”

Police sources indicated that “The atacker, was holding a hatchet and a knife and was accompanied by two other thiefs”.

They added that “the attacker, aged 27, who was rushed to a hospital in Aarhus, has a close relationship with the Somali Islamic movement Al Shabab and al Qaeda in East Africa” and that “secret services followed his steps for a long time”.

Bent Preben Nielsen, police chief inspector of Jutland, told the newspaper that “The man was captured on Friday night by police officers after being hit by two bullets, one in his left hand and another on his right knee.”

The cartoonist, was with one of his sons, aged 5, and had been threatened several times since the publication of his cartoons in 2005.

Danish police arrested two Tunisians in February of 2008 accused of planning an attack against Westergaard.

The cartoonist and his wife changed their address several times due to recommendations of the Danish secret services.

In September 2005, the newspaper ‘Jyllands Posten’ published a dozen cartoons of the Prophet Mahoma that initially went unnoticed but months later triggered a wave of protests in several Muslim countries.

The protests left more than one hundred deaths in different countries.

The drawing consisted in ‘ Mahoma as a bearded man of sinister aspect, who carries a bomb in his turban. “