Swedish artist receives telephone threat from Somalia

 

 Swedish artist receives telephone threat from Somalia  

 

Stockholm - A Swedish artist who angered Muslims in 2007 for his caricature of the Prophet Mohammed as a dog said Monday he had received two threatening phone calls from Somalia.

 

Lars Vilks said a man who spoke poor Swedish asked him if he was aware of what had happened in neighbouring Denmark to newspaper cartoonist Kurt Westergaard who late Friday survived an attack on his home.

 

Westergaard's controversial cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban was one of 12 images published in September 2005 by Jyllands-Posten. The cartoons sparked outrage among Muslims and violent protests worldwide in early 2006.

 

Late Friday a Somali-born man armed with an axe and a knife broke into Westergaard's home in western Denmark but was arrested by police alerted by the cartoonist who sought refuge in a specially secured room.

 

'I said, of course I knew about it,' Vilks told the online edition of the Helsingborgs Dagblad newspaper.

 

The man said several times 'they were coming' before the call ended, Vilks said. He filed a complaint with police later Monday.

 

Vilks established that the phone number on his display was from Somalia.

 

The Swedish artist in 2007 received several threats and a bounty of 100,000 dollars was placed on his head by an Iraq-based insurgency group after his caricature was published.

 

Source: dpa