An intruder who was shot and wounded by police after breaking into the Denmark home of Muhammad cartoonist Kurt Westergaard has links to Islamic terrorists, according to Danish intelligence.
The 28-year-old Somali man is connected to the radical Islamist al-Shabaab militia and al-Qaeda leaders in East Africa, claims Denmark’s PET intelligence service.
Police say the intruder entered the property by smashing a window and was carrying a knife and axe. He has been charged with two counts of attempted murder after a court hearing today in Aarhus, Denmark. The 74-year-old, whose cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad sparked riots five years ago, has had numerous threats on his life and his house in Viby, near Aarhus, is heavily fortified with security modifications.
Westergaard, who had his five-year-old granddaughter staying with him, was able to hide in a panic room in his bathroom and signal the police using an inbuilt alarm button. Officers were at the house within two minutes and shot the intruder after he tried to attack them.
The suspect, who is being treated in hospital for injuries to his hand and knee, will be charged with attempted murder, according to Jakob Scharf, head of PET.
Scharf, said the attack was “terror related” and that the Somalian had been under surveillance for activities unrelated to Westergaard.
Westergaard said his assailant was screaming ‘blood’ and ‘revenge’ as he tried to smash his way into the panic room
He said: “I locked myself in our safe room. He tried to smash the entrance door with an axe.
“My grandchild did fine. It was scary. It was close. Really close. But we did it.”
It is still not clear whether Westergaard took his granddaughter in the panic room with him. A spokesman for his employers, Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten newspaper, said he fled into the room alone.
Westergaard’s cartoon strip caused an outcry across the Muslim world when it was published in Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten newspaper in 2005.
Islamic law forbids any images depicting their founding prophet and one of the panels featured Muhammad with a bomb in his turban.
The cartoon’s publication sparked a wave of protests outside Danish embassies and resulted in a string of deaths.
Westergaard initially went into hiding and has had a $1 million price put on his head by Islamic extremists.
In October last year, two Chicago men were charged with terror offences related to an alleged plot to kill both him and the newspaper’s former cultural editor.
In 2008, Danish police arrested two Tunisian men over another suspected plot to murder Westergaard.