FT.com / Europe - Swedish newspapers reprint Mohammed cartoon
Leading Swedish newspapers on Wednesday published a cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed with the body of a dog after the foiling of an alleged plot to kill the artist responsible for the drawing.
Seven people were detained in Ireland on Tuesday in connection with the alleged plan to murder Lars Vilks, a Swedish cartoonist who has been under threat from Islamic extremists since his caricature of Mohammed was first published in 2007.
The decision by three newspapers to republish the cartoon threatened to add fuel to a controversy that has flared intermittently since a Danish newspaper sparked uproar across the Muslim world in 2005 by publishing images of Mohammed, including one depicting him wearing a bomb as a turban.
Dagens Nyheter, a Stockholm-based daily, said it printed the picture as part of its news coverage of the alleged plot but made clear it was also a gesture of solidarity with the artist.
Vilks doesnt stand alone in this conflict, the newspaper said in an editorial. A threat against him is, in the long term, also a threat against all Swedes.
Stockholm-based Expressen and Malmos Sydsvenska Dagbladet also displayed the cartoon.
Irish police said the alleged plot involved two Algerians, two Libyans, a Palestinian, a Croatian and a US woman married to one of the Algerian suspects. In an apparently related move, US authorities charged a woman in Pennsylvania with plotting to kill a Swedish man and recruiting people over the internet to commit attacks overseas. The US justice department refused to say whether the target was Mr Vilks but US media reports said the cases were connected.
The indictment said Colleen LaRose, who used the pseudonym Jihad Jane in internet postings, wrote in e-mails of her willingness to become a martyr. Todays indictment, which alleges that a woman from suburban America agreed to carry out murder overseas and to provide material support to terrorists, underscores the evolving nature of the threat we face, said David Kris, head of the departments national security division.
Mr Vilks is one of several artists and editors to have faced threats from Islamic extremists vowing revenge for publication of cartoons, which break an Islamic law forbidding depictions of the prophet.
