Freedom of Expression in Art Comic Strip Artist Killed
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who had lived nether constabulary protection since making a sketch of the Prophet Muhammad with a dog's body in 2007, died in a weekend car crash forth with two police bodyguards, law said Monday. He was 75.
Vilks and 2 plainclothes officers were killed in a head-on crash with a truck on Sunday afternoon, said Carina Persson, the police main for southern Sweden. All three died on the spot. The 45-year-onetime truck commuter was flown to a hospital with serious injuries.
Persson said the police car, which was existence driven by one of the bodyguards, had left Stockholm and was heading south when information technology veered into the path of the truck. Both vehicles then burst into flames. The accident occurred well-nigh Markaryd, 100 kilometers (lx miles) northeast of Malmo, Sweden'due south third-largest city.
"At that place is nil else for now that indicates that it was something else just a traffic accident," Persson told a press conference.
Sweden's height police chief, Anders Thornberg, said an investigation would take identify, but was expected "to accept a relatively long time."
Sweden's Culture Minister Amanda Lind called it "an extremely tragic traffic blow."
Vilks was largely unknown outside Sweden before 2007, when he drew a sketch of Muhammad with a dog's body. Dogs are considered unclean by conservative Muslims and Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.
Al-Qaida put a compensation on Vilks' caput. In 2010, two men tried to burn down his firm in southern Sweden.
Since that time, Vilks was forced to live under police force protection, "due to the fact that he fabricated use of his freedom of expression and his artistic liberty," Lind said Monday.
Over the years he connected to face death threats.
In 2014, a woman from Pennsylvania pleaded guilty in a plot to kill him.
The post-obit twelvemonth, a complimentary-spoken communication seminar that Vilks attended in Copenhagen, Denmark, was attacked by a lone gunman who killed a Danish film director and wounded iii police force officers.
Vilks, who was widely believed to take been the intended target of that 2015 set on, was whisked abroad unharmed by bodyguards. The gunman later killed a Jewish security guard exterior a synagogue and wounded two more than officers before he was killed in a firefight with police.
Police said Monday they did not know why Vilks' car drove into the wrong lane but they were investigating whether a tire might have exploded. The automobile had puncture-proof tires, police said.
The blow happened on the north-south E4 highway on Dominicus afternoon. The unmarked constabulary car patently ploughed through a cable guardrail separating the north- and due south-leap lanes, senior constabulary officeholder Stefan Siteus said at the news conference.
"We have constitute residues of tire on the E4 before the accident, and nosotros are looking into the possibility that there could accept been some kind of tire explosion," Siteus said.
The police vehicle weighed 4.5 tons, which could explain how it could drive through a cable guardrail, Siteus said. An ordinary big vehicle weighs less than two tons. He added that the speed limit at the site was 110 kilometers per hour (68 mph).
Two investigations are at present taking place. Main Prosecutor Kajsa Sundgren said she had taken over a preliminary investigation into whether "any police force officer may accept committed a criminal offense in connection with the blow."
Equally to whether the blow may have been caused by someone else, that is being investigated by the police, she said.
"There is a lot of speculation going on about what may accept happened, and I am careful not to contribute to them," Habitation Diplomacy Minister Mikael Damberg told the Swedish news agency TT. "I know that the law take this very seriously."
Born in 1946 in Helsingborg, in southern Sweden, Vilks worked equally an creative person for almost four decades and rose to fame for challenging the boundaries of art through several controversial works.
His most famous pieces included "Nimis" — a sculpture of driftwood built without permission in Sweden'southward Kullaberg nature reserve — also every bit Prophet Muhammad drawings, including the ane that showed the prophet as a domestic dog.
Vilks initially planned to brandish the drawing at an showroom at a Swedish cultural heritage center, but the drawing was removed over security concerns. It went largely unnoticed until a Swedish newspaper printed the drawing with an editorial defending freedom of expression.
Several of his works, including driftwood sculptures and Mohammad drawings, including the one showing the Muslim prophet'due south head on the trunk of a dog, are currently on display in Warsaw, Poland. The works are being shown as part an exhibition curated by a correct-wing director that aims to challenge left-fly political correctness.
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Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/swedish-muhammad-cartoon-artist-said-killed-in-car-accident/
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