JURIST - Paper Chase: Denmark paper reprints Muhammad drawings after cartoonist murder plot thwarted

[JURIST] Danish newspaper Jyllands-Poste [media website] reprinted a cartoon [image] Wednesday drawn by Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard one day after Danish police arrested three people [JURIST report] suspected in a plot to murder Westergaard for his characterization of Muhammad. Westergaard was one of 12 cartoonists who published cartoons [Le Monde slideshow] of the Muslim prophet Muhammad in 2005 that sparked widespread protests across the Islamic world. Several other Danish newspapers also reprinted Westergaard's depiction Wednesday, accompanied by statements defending freedom of speech and the public's right to see the cause of the backlash.

The Muhammad cartoon controversy [JURIST report] led to a number of international lawsuits and arrests alleging defamation of character and disruption of the peace. A French court in March 2007 dismissed charges [JURIST report] against Charlie-Hebdo> magazine and its director after the court found that the defendants had not purposely meant to offend Muslims. In September, Bangladeshi authorities arrested [JURIST report] cartoonist Arifur Rahman and suspended the publication of weekly satire magazine Alpin after it reprinted the cartoon. Last month, a former newspaper editor in Belarus was sentenced to three years in prison [JURIST report] for reprinting the cartoons in the Zhoda newspaper. AP has more.

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