Swedish cartoonist who depicted Muhammad with dog’s body dies in car crash

Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who was living under police protection after drawing the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog in 2007, was killed in a car crash in the south of the country on Sunday, police said.

The 75-year-old, along with two police protection officers he was traveling with, were killed when their vehicle collided with a truck near the southern town of Markaryd, catching fire.

Swedish police said in a report Monday that although they were still in the process of establishing the cause of the accident, there is no suspicion of foul play.

“This is a very tragic incident. It is now important for all of us that we do everything possible to investigate what happened and what caused the collision,” the statement said, adding that the driver of the truck was being treated in hospital.

Police did not name Vilks as one of the victims, but the artist’s partner confirmed his death to Sweden Dagens Nyheter newspaper.

Swedish media reported that Vilks’ vehicle was traveling at high speed, with a witness say the Aftonbladet newspaper that the car seemed to lose control.

Vilks created international controversy in 2007 after drawing a series of sketches of the Prophet Muhammad depicting him as a dog. They sparked outrage in the Muslim world after one of them was published in a Swedish newspaper, which ultimately resulted in Vilks being placed under police protection.

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt met with ambassadors from 22 Muslim countries in an attempt to defuse the situation, which arose a year after the Jyllands-Posten Controversy over the cartoons of Muhammad in Denmark, while an Al-Qaeda affiliate put a bounty of $ 100,000 on Vilks’ head.

In 2010 Swedish newspapers reprinted the cartoon after two men were indicted in the Republic of Ireland for conspiring to kill Vilks, while in 2013 an American extremist known as “Jihad Jane” was convicted to 10 years in prison for conspiracy to kill him. .

And in 2015, Vilks was caught in a terrorist attack on a free speech cafe in Copenhagen, where an Islamist gunman killed a filmmaker and injured three police officers, before killing a volunteer in a synagogue. Vilks thought he was probably the target of this attack.