Who was Lars Vilks, the cartoonist for whom Al Qaeda was offering $ 100,000 and who died in a traffic accident?

The Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks He died last Sunday in a traffic accident in the southern city of Markaryd, his family reported to the local newspaper Dagens Nyheter. The Swedish Police added in a statement that the two agents who were in charge of protecting him died together with the artist. For 14 years, Vilks was protected by the various death threats he received after drawing a cartoon of a stray dog ​​with the head of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

According to local media reports collected by the BBC, the vehicle in which Vilks was traveling was going at high speed, which led to it getting out of control and invaded the opposite lane, the same one from which a truck was coming that did not have time to deviate. The crash, which according to witnesses generated a huge uproar due to the “incredible speed”To which they were traveling, caused a fire in which Vilks and the officers died.

“It is being investigated like any other traffic accident. Due to the fact that there are two policemen involved, an investigation has been assigned to a special section of the prosecution”, Said a police spokesman to the AFP agency.

THE DETONANT

Born on June 20, 1946 in the city of Helsingborg, Lars Endel Roger Vilks Lanat obtained a doctorate in Art History from Lund University in 1987. He was considered a self-taught artist and focused his work mainly on making sculptures. .

He worked at the National Academy of Arts in Oslo and taught Art Theory at the National Academy of Arts in Bergen.

In July 2007, Vilks made a series of cartoons showing the head of the Islamic prophet Muhammad on the body of a dog standing in a roundabout in Sweden.

The art galleries to which Vilks offered the drawings, however, refused to exhibit them, claiming that they feared for their safety and the reprisals it could cause from the Muslim community.

A little over a year earlier, a controversy had taken place in Denmark over the cartoons published in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten. These caused a wave of protests, many of them violent, in different countries, attacks against European and Danish diplomatic missions were reported in Muslim-majority countries, in addition to attacks against Catholic churches and a boycott of Danish products.

For this reason, it was only on August 18 that one of Vilks’s drawings could be published. The pages of Örebro’s regional daily Nerikes Allehanda included an illustration along with an editorial on self-censorship and freedom of religion.

The reaction was immediate, various sectors of the Muslim community showed their anger at the representation of the prophet, something forbidden in their religion. Then-Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt had to meet ambassadors from 22 Muslim countries to try to defuse the situation.

However, the most worrying thing was the reward that jihadist groups put on the cartoonist’s head. According to the BBC, the terrorist organization Al Qaeda in Iraq offered $ 100,000 to whoever killed him.

MURDER ATTEMPTS

After the publication of the cartoon, the police set up a security cordon around the Nerikes Allehanda newspaper, many of its journalists received special protection and Vilks himself was placed in a special protection program in the face of the constant death threats he received.

A Muslim woman was arrested in western Sweden for sending him an email threatening him with death. The SITE Institute, dedicated to monitoring international terrorist activity, reported that the sites used by jihadists published a list with information on more than 100 Swedish companies calling for a boycott of their militants against them.

In 2010, in addition, 7 people were arrested in Ireland accused of planning the murder of Vilks. The detainees had Moroccan and Yemeni nationalities, many of them were in a refugee situation, according to the authorities. That same year, at least two mail bombs were sent to news agencies and the Swedish Security Service, injuring two.

In December 2010, Vilks’ website was hacked. Three years later, Al Qaeda added cartoonists Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier to its list after the publication that led to the terrorist attack on the French weekly Charlie Hebdo, reporting that Lars Vilks was on the list.

However, the biggest threat against Vilks came in 2015, during a conference on freedom of expression in Copenhagen that the cartoonist had attended. According to the Spanish newspaper El País, the attack was perpetrated by a Palestinian citizen who fired at the cafe where the event was held, causing the death of Danish documentary filmmaker Finn Norgaard. After the attack, he assassinated a synagogue guard and was eventually killed by Danish security forces.