COPENHAGEN — Denmark’s intelligence service says police have foiled an attempt to kill cartoonist Kurt Westergaard — the artist who drew cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, causing outrage in the Muslim world.
Jakob Scharf, who heads the PET intelligence service, says a 28-year-old Somalia man was armed with an axe and a knive when he entered Westergaard’s home in Aarhus.
Scharf says the attack was “terror related,” adding the suspected assailant has close contacts to the Somali terrorist group, al-Shabaab.
The Somali man was shot by police in the knee and the shoulder during the Friday attack. Preben Nielsen of the police in Aarhus, where the attack took place, said the suspect was seriously injured but his life was not in danger.