A Danish cartoonist, whose depiction of Prophet Mohammed sparked outrage in the Muslim world, testified Thursday of the fear he experienced when an axe-wielding man broke into his home in January 2010.
‘It was really frightening,’ Kurt Westergaard, 75, told an appeal court in Aarhus, western Denmark.
The court was considering whether to impose a stricter sentence on the Somali-born man, who in February received a nine-year jail term for the attack on Westergaard.
A lower court had earlier ruled that the attack was an act of terror and convicted the 29-year-old defendant for attempted murder, citing that he was armed with an axe and a knife at the time.
Westergaard survived the New Year’s day 2010 attack unharmed.
In his testimony he recounted how he hid in a panic room after hearing the man smashing a glass door with an axe. The court also heard recordings of phone calls that Westergaard made to the police, calling for help.
The prosecution wants the appeal court to add three years to the attacker’s sentence, in line with rulings in other terror cases.
The defendant, who wants a lower sentence, repeated that his only intent was to frighten Westergaard since he was angered by the 2005 cartoon, one of 12 published by the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.
All the cartoons - one of them depicted the prophet with a lit bomb instead of a turban on his head - were viewed as ‘blasphemous’ in the Islamic world, and triggered riots worldwide.