Danish Muhammad Cartoonist Defiant In Face Of Threats, Alleged Murder Plots

October 28, 2009

Author: Jan M. Olsen

Source: Yahoo News

Wire Service: AP

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/091028/world/eu_denmark_cartoonist_1

A few pen strokes thrust Kurt Westergaard into the midst of an international crisis, exposing him to death threats and an alleged assassination plot.

Terror charges brought against two Chicago men this week show the 74-year-old Dane remains a potential target for extremists, four years after he drew a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban.

"I am an old man so I am not so afraid anymore," Westergaard said Tuesday in an interview with Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published his drawing in September 2005 along with 11 other cartoons of Muhammad.

The drawings triggered an uproar a few months later when Danish and other Western embassies in several Muslim countries were torched by angry protesters who felt the cartoons had profoundly insulted Islam.