Would-be assassin under guard after attempt on cartoonist's life

A Somali man was under heavy guard at a Danish hospital today after police stopped him from killing an artist whose cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed outraged the Muslim world.

Jakob Scharf, head of Denmark‘s PET intelligence agency, said the 28-year-old man with ties to the al-Qaida group al-Shabab broke a window and entered Kurt Westergaard’s home in Aarhus last night armed with an axe and a knife.

The 75-year-old artist, who has received previous death threats for depicting the Prophet Mohammed with a bomb-shaped turban, pressed an alarm and fled with his visiting five-year-old granddaughter to a custom-made safe room.

Officers arrived two minutes later and tried to arrest the assailant, who wielded an axe at a police officer, said Preben Nielsen of the Aarhus police. The officer then shot the man in his knee and his hand, authorities said.

The suspect’s name was not released in line with Danish privacy rules. Mr Nielsen said he was in serious condition at a hospital but his life was not in danger.

Mr Scharf said the man would be charged with attempted murder for trying to kill Mr Westergaard and the police officer at a hearing later today in Aarhus, Denmark’s second largest city, 125 miles north-west of Copenhagen.

Mr Westergaard was “quite shocked” but was not injured, Mr Nielsen said.

The attack on the artist, whose rendering was among 12 cartoons that led to the torching of Danish diplomatic offices in predominantly Muslim countries in 2006, was “terror-related”, Mr Scharf said.

“The arrested man has, according to PET, close relations to the Somali terrorist group al-Shabab and al-Qaida leaders in eastern Africa,” Mr Scharf said.

“(The attack) again confirms the terror threat that is directed at Denmark and against the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard in particular.”

The Somali man had won an asylum case and received a residency permit to stay in Denmark. Mr Scharf said the man is suspected of having been involved in terror-related activities in east Africa and had been under PET’s surveillance but not in connection with Mr Westergaard.

Mr Westergaard remains a potential target for extremists nearly five years after he drew a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed. The drawing was printed along with 11 others in Jyllands-Posten in 2005.

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.

Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favourable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.