Danish Newspapers Republish Prophet Mohammed Cartoon

Five Danish newspapers have republished on Wednesday(Feb. 13, 2008) a caricature satirizing the Prophet Mohammad which sparked huge protests across the Muslim World in 2006.
 
Denmark’s five major daily news papers, Jyllands-Posten, Politiken, Berlingske Tidende, BT and Ekstra Bladet, said that they reprinted the caricature as a protest against the plot to murder one of the cartoonists, and to show their commitment to freedom of speech.
 
Three suspects were held on Tuesday for planning to murder Kurt Westergaard, a cartoonist who published 12 drawings at Jyllands-Posten Danish newspapers in September 2005.
 
The three suspects are a Dane of Moroccan descent and two Tunisians who will be held until they are expelled from the country, and the Danish will be further released pending further investigation for lack of enough evidence to keep them in custody, as the head of Denmark’s Intelligence Agency PET Jackob Scharf stated.
 
The cartoon published on Wednesday’s editions depicts Prophet Mohammed wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse.
 
That cartoon was the most controversial of all other pictures published more than two years ago, as Muslims consider any depiction of the Prophets as offensive. 
 
An editorial in Politiken newspapers said yesterday, “Regardless of whether Jyllands-Posten at the time used freedom of speech unwisely and with damaging consequences, the paper deserves unconditional solidarity when it is threatened with terror.”
 
Adding, “That is why Politiken today… prints the drawing, even though at no time have we sympathized with Jyllands-Posten”s provocation.”