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MUHAMMAD

Two men arrested over fire at Vilks’ house

Two men, aged 19 and 21, have been arrested in connection with an arson attack at the home in southern Sweden of artist Lars Vilks.

Published: 16 May 2010 10:05 CEST
Updated: 16 May 2010 14:17 CEST
Two men arrested over fire at Vilks' house
21-year-old suspect arrested

The 21-year-old was arrested late on Saturday at his home in Landskrona, 40 kilometres from the house where Vilks lives. He is being held on suspicion of aggravated attempted arson.

A police spokesman said he was detained after personal items were found near Vilks’ house in the village of Nyhamnsläge, which was slightly damaged in the attack overnight Friday.

“He is of Swedish nationality but originally from Kosovo … He was unknown to the police so far,” Scania district police spokesman Calle Pärsson told AFP.

The suspect whose name was not made public “is still being detained and expected to see a judge to decide whether or not he will be charged, possibly

tomorrow” (Monday), said Pärsson.

The 19-year-old was arrested in Helsingborg on Sunday morning and is suspected of attempted arson. He does not have a previous criminal record.

Vilks was not at his home in Nyhamnsläge at the time of the attack in the early hours of Saturday morning.

An acquaintance of the artist discovered the damage on Saturday morning. Windows had been smashed, there was minor fire damage to the front of the house and plastic bottles filled with petrol were found inside the property.

Vilks told AFP he did not want to over-react to the attack but would take some precautions.

“I’ll have to have a hide away for some time, which I think is reasonable… I can probably go in the house during daytime, but I’ll have to sleep somewhere else.

“We have to see if it’s possible to install an alarm or something…. I shouldn’t be paranoid. This could be a one-time occasion,” he added.

In 2007, Swedish regional daily Nerikes Allehanda published Vilks’ satirical cartoon to illustrate an editorial on the importance of freedom of expression.

The cartoon prompted protests by Muslims in the town of Örebro in central Sweden where the newspaper is based, while Egypt, Iran and Pakistan made formal complaints.

Vilks has had a $100,000 bounty on his head from an Al-Qaeda-linked group since the publication of his drawing of the Muslim prophet Muhammad as a dog in 2007.

In March, an American woman known as “Jihad Jane” was charged by US authorities with conspiring to kill Vilks after seven suspected co-plotters were arrested in Ireland.

On Tuesday, the artist was head-butted in the chest as he gave a talk at a lecture theatre at Uppsala University.

LARS VILKS

Swedish artist Lars Vilks, known for Muhammad cartoon, killed in car accident

Swedish artist Lars Vilks, known for his cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad as well as his huge wooden sculptures, died in a car accident on Sunday.

Published: 4 October 2021 09:48 CEST
Swedish artist Lars Vilks gives a lecture
Swedish artist Lars Vilks, pictured here giving a lecture in 2015, died in a car collision on Sunday. Photo: Maja Suslin/TT

The 75-year-old has lived under police protection due to death threats over his 2007 Prophet Muhammad drawing. He and two police officers were killed in a collision with an oncoming truck, Swedish police confirmed to AFP, and the accident is currently not being treated as suspicious.

“This is being investigated like any other road accident. Because two policemen were involved, an investigation has been assigned to a special section of the prosecutor’s office,” a police spokesperson told AFP, adding that there was no suspicion of foul play.

The accident occurred near the small town Markaryd when the car Vilks was travelling in crashed into an oncoming truck. Both vehicles caught fire and the truck driver was sent to hospital for treatment, according to police. In a statement, the police said the cause of the accident was unclear.

“The person we were protecting and two colleagues died in this inconceivable and terribly sad tragedy,” said regional police head Carina Persson.

Vilks had been under police protection since 2010, after his cartoon of Muhammad with a dog’s body published in Swedish newspapers three years earlier prompted outrage among those who consider depictions of the Muslim prophet deeply offensive or blasphemous. Al-Qaeda offered a $100,000 reward for Vilks’ murder.

The depiction also sparked diplomatic friction, with Sweden’s then prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt meeting ambassadors from several Muslim countries to ease tensions. In 2015, Vilks survived a gun attack at a free-speech conference in Copenhagen that left a Danish film director dead.

While the Muhammad drawing is what Vilks was best known for internationally, he was primarily a sculptor.

His most significant work is the driftwood sculpture Nimis, which he began building in a Skåne national park in 1980.

This work was also not without controversy; Vilks built it illegally without acquiring a permit, sparking a legal dispute with local authorities who demanded it be destroyed. The artist sold both Nimis and a second artwork, and although he was fined for building them, and Nimis was badly damaged in a 2016 fire, they remain largely standing today.

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