Danish cartoonist targetted by Islamists for his 2005 caricature of the Prophet Mohammed cut short a visit to Norway after police caught wind of a possible attack against him, he said Tuesday.
Kurt Westergaard, 76, has already been the victim of a murder attempt and numerous death threats after drawing the most controversial of the 12 cartoons of the Prophet that appeared in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, depicting his turban with a lit fuse in it.
Westergaard had been scheduled to attend the launch in Oslo on Tuesday of a children’s book for which he provided the illustrations, but he cancelled and returned to Denmark late Monday after Norway’s intelligence agency PST was informed of a possible plot against him.
“I was told to return home immediately, the official version being that I had heart problems,” he told Norwegian broadcaster NRK.
“It’s something that was decided by the Norwegian and Danish intelligence agencies (PST and PET) and so I returned home immediately,” he said, adding that he had no health complaints in reality.
Norway’s PST refused to comment on Westergaard’s remarks.
It had previously confirmed his presence in Norway but refused to comment on whether there were concrete threats made against him.
“This is a person who lives with a threat constantly weighing on him,” PST spokeswoman Siv Alsen told AFP, providing no other details.
Westergaard, who lives with round-the-clock security, was attacked by an axe-wielding 29-year-old Somali man who broke into his home in January 2010.
An appeals court in June sentenced the attacker, Mohamed Geele, to 10 years in prison for attempted murder.