Danish cartoonist tells of "close call" after attack (News Feature)

By Lennart Simonsson Jan 2, 2010, 17:12 GMT

Copenhagen - A day after surviving an attack in his home by an axe and knife-wielding 28-year-old Somali, Danish newspaper cartoonist Kurt Westergaard Saturday spoke of 'a close call.'

Realizing he was no match for the assailant, the 74-year-old Westergaard said he fled into a specially reinforced room in his home near Arhus, eastern Jutland, and alerted the police with a panic button.

While waiting for the police to arrive, Westergaard heard the man shouting for 'revenge' and 'blood' while bashing at the door.

'It was horrible,' Westergaard told the online edition of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper he works for.

'But I managed to remember to think about my security. But it was a close call. It was really close, but we managed.'

Westergaard said he was very concerned about the safety of his five-year-old granddaughter, who was in his home at the time of the break-in. But 'she was not harmed,' he said.

The man was arrested late Friday after he was shot in the hand and knee when he threw an axe at a responding police office. The injuries were not life-threatening and the alleged assailant was remanded in custody on Saturday.

Westergaard's controversial cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed, with a bomb in his turban, was one of 12 images published in September 2005 by the Jyllands-Posten newspaper. The cartoons sparked worldwide violent protests in 2006.

The Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) said Friday's incident was a terrorism-related attack.

According to the PET, the suspect has ties with the radical Islamist al-Shabaab militia and al-Qaeda in East Africa.

Somali nationals living in Denmark joined politicians and newspaper editors in condemning the attack on Westergaard.

Helle Thorning-Schmidt, leader of the main opposition Social Democrats, said it was 'an attack on Danish democracy.'

'We can't accept that fanatic Islamists can believe that they can infringe on freedom of speech,' she said.

Similar remarks were made by other members of the opposition and minority centre-right government.

'It is frightful and shocking. I am sure that the whole Somali community in Denmark reject this attack against Kurt Westergaard,' Mohamed Gelle, head of the Somali Network, told news agency Ritzau.

An estimated 16,000 Somalis live in Denmark. There have been reports that young members of the community have been recruited by al-Shabaab, which is fighting to topple the weak Western-backed government in Somalia.

Gelle and Ahmed H Dhaqane, head of the Somali Association in Denmark, said they supported calls for the European Union to add al- Shabab to its list of terrorist groups. The United States has already done so.

Somalia has been embroiled in chaos since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

Westergaard has been the target of several murder plots since 2006.

In February 2008, two Tunisian nationals were arrested on suspicion of planning to murder him. One of the men voluntarily left Denmark a few months later, the other was allowed to stay in Denmark, but his movements were severely restricted.

In October 2009, the US Justice Department said two people had been arrested and charged in a plot to attack the Jyllands-Posten building and its employees.

Jyllands-Posten editor-in-chief Jorn Mikkelsen said Friday's attack was 'the latest in a row' against Westergaard and the daily, but said it was a police matter to assess security measures.