Somali charged with attempt to kill Danish cartoonist

A Somali man was charged yesterday with the attempted murder of a Danish cartoonist whose caricatures of the Muslim prophet Mohammed sparked riots and protests around the world.

The axe-wielding 28-year-old broke into Kurt Westergaard's home late last Friday, screaming for "revenge" and "blood". The cartoonist hid in a panic room with a five-year-old granddaughter and called the police.

The suspect is alleged to have thrown the axe at one of the policemen who arrived on the scene, just missing him, then attacked with a knife before being shot and wounded in the arm and thigh.

He was brought bandaged into court at Aarhus, northwest Denmark, yesterday on a stretcher wearing a hospital gown and covered with blankets, the Ritzau agency reported.

"He was charged with double attempted murder," a court spokesman said, adding the suspect was remanded in custody for four weeks, the first two of them in solitary confinement.

The accused, who has not been named, had one arm bandaged, a leg in a splint and a towel over his face to avoid identification, media reports said, while describing him as bearded with a shaved head.

Denmark's PET intelligence agency said he was linked to Somalia's radical Shebab Islamic movement and leaders of Al-Qaeda in east Africa. He lives on the Danish island of Seeland, where the capital Copenhagen is located.

Westergaard is one of 12 cartoonists whose drawings on Islam were first published in Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September 2005. His cartoon depicted Mohammed wearing a turban in the shape of a bomb.

The cartoons were considered offensive by many Muslims and their publication sparked violent protests worldwide in January and February 2006 as well as a string of death threats.

Westergaard, 74, was clearly shaken by the attack at his home at Viby, near Aarhus.

He described on the Jyllands-Posten's website how the attacker smashed the front door with the axe, screaming "revenge" and "blood" in poor Danish.

"I hid in the secure room when he entered the house. I knew I had no chance of stopping him so I called the police," Westergaard said.

"It was horrible. The most important thing was that I had the reaction to secure myself. But it was close, very close."

Bent Preben Nielsen, chief police inspector for East Jutland, told AFP that police who went to the scene fired at the aggressor as he threatened them with the axe and a knife, hitting him in the hip and the right hand.

"The person arrested... has close links with the Somali terrorist organisation Al-Shebab as well as with the heads of Al-Qaeda in East Africa," Denmark's intelligence service said.

"He is also suspected of being implicated in terrorist activities when he was in east Africa. The individual arrested has also been a member of a terrorist network implanted in Denmark that has been under surveillance by PET for a long time."

Somalia's radical Islamic Shebab group hailed the attack.

"We appreciate the incident in which a Muslim Somali boy attacked the devil who abused our prophet Mohammed and we call upon all Muslims around the world to target the people like (him),"

Shebab spokesman Sheikh Ali Muhamud Rage told AFP in Mogadishu.

"It is a general obligation for all Muslims to defend their religion and the prophet. He really did what was to be done by any other Muslim," he said, while not directly confirming the suspect's links to Shebab.

The protests over the cartoons saw demonstrators burn Danish flags and torch Danish diplomatic offices in Damascus, Beirut and Tehran, while dozens of people died in rioting in Nigeria, Libya and Pakistan.

Two Tunisians were arrested in Denmark in 2008 on suspicion of planning to murder Westergaard but released without trial after they appealed a government order for their expulsion on national security grounds.

Internet hackers last April attacked a website run by Denmark's Free Press Society selling prints of Westergaard's controversial cartoon, the group's director Lars Hedegaard said.