Man 'Tries To Kill Mohammed Cartoonist'
9:14am UK, Saturday January 02, 2010
Rob Cole, Sky News Online
Danish police say they have shot a Somali man with links to al Qaeda who broke into the home of a cartoonist whose depictions of the Prophet Mohammed outraged many Muslims.
Police say the 28-year-old - who was armed with a knife and axe - was trying to kill Kurt Westergaard.
The intruder was linked to Somali terror organisation al Shabaab and al Qaeda leaders in east Africa, the Danish Security and Intelligence Service PET said in a statement.
He was shot twice and will be charged with two counts of attempted murder after also attacking a policeman.
Mr Westergaard said he pressed a panic button and fled to the safe room in his Aarhus home with his five-year-old granddaughter.
"I locked myself in our safe room," Mr Westergaard, 74, told the Danish news agency Ritzau.
"He tried to smash the entrance door with an axe.
"He used insults, I don't remember which, but it was bad language. He spoke poor Danish and he wound up saying he'd be back." I locked myself in our safe room. He tried to smash the entrance door with an axe.
Kurt Westergaard on the attack at his home
"My grandchild did fine," Mr Westergaard told the newspaper Jyllands-Posten.
"It was scary. It was close. Really close. But we did it."
Mr Westergaard's home is protected by tight security, including a panic line to local police, and is subject to regular patrols by officers.
Chief Supt Morten Jensen, from East Jutland police, said: "A personal alarm was received from Mr Westergaard's house."
Officers found the man "armed with an axe and a knife in either hand".
The security service said the intruder had been involved in a "terror-related network" that had been under investigation in connection with threats to Westergaard.
"PET looks very seriously upon this case which once again confirms the terror threat directed against Denmark and the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard in particular," PET chief Jakob Scharf said in the statement.
"He broke a window of Mr Westergarrd's house. He tried to attack one officer with an axe and he was shot in his right leg and his left arm," Chief Supt Jenson said.
"He's not seriously injured, he's in custody."
Kurt Westergaard
Westergaard hid in a safe room
Denmark's Ritzau news agency said police sappers were sent in to the home to look for a bomb that might have been laid.
The Danish cartoonist caused fury in the Islamic world in 2005 after the newspaper published his drawings of Mohammed wearing a turban in the shape of a bomb.
There were violent protests in many Islamic countries that led to dozens of deaths in Nigeria, Libya and Pakistan.
Demonstrators burned Danish flags in protests that culminated in February 2006 with the torching of Danish diplomatic offices in Damascus and Beirut.
Mr Westergaard received several death threats.
Two Chicago men were charged last October with terror offences related to an alleged plot to kill Mr Westergaard and the newspaper's former cultural editor.
Most Muslims consider any depiction of the founder of Islam as offensive.
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