Lars Vilks, the Swedish cartoonist of Muhammad, died in a road accident – archyworldys

Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who was living under protection after drawing the Prophet Muhammad with a dog’s body in 2007, was killed in a traffic accident in Sweden on Sunday (October 3rd).

Swedish police have confirmed to Agence France-Presse (AFP) the death of the 75-year-old cartoonist, and the two police officers tasked with protecting him, in a violent accident in the south of the country. She ruled out the hypothesis of a malicious act.

“It is investigated like any traffic accident. As two police officers are involved, an investigation was also entrusted to a particular section of the prosecution “, said a spokesperson for the local police. Asked about possible elements suggesting a track other than accidental, the latter replied that no: “The investigation would be oriented differently if this had been the case”.

The accident occurred Sunday afternoon on the E4 motorway, near the town of Markaryd when the car hit a truck traveling in the opposite direction. The two vehicles then caught fire “As a result of the collision”.

According to the daily Expressen, the unmarked police car, which was traveling very fast, crossed a crash barrier for an as yet undetermined reason before hitting the truck. The truck driver was hospitalized, police said.

Released unscathed from an attack in 2015

After his drawing of Muhammad as a dog, which followed the Danish cartoons of the prophet of Islam published in 2005, Lars Vilks lived under protection almost uninterrupted, due to numerous threats and attacks from Islamists.

His assassination was thus planned by American Colleen LaRose, alias “JihadJane”, who would have recruited Islamists for this purpose according to American justice, before being arrested in October 2009. In May 2010, two young Swedish brothers of Kosovar origin try to set her house on fire with Molotov cocktails . He was not there. In June 2010, he took a whim during a debate at the Swedish University of Uppsala which turned into a fist fight.

In September 2011, hundreds of people were evacuated from a building in Gothenburg where the Contemporary Art Biennale was inaugurated: the police, who had strong reasons to believe that Mr. Vilks would be attacked, arrested four people.

February 14, 2015, a young Dane of Palestinian origin opened fire when he tried to break into a debate on freedom of expression in Copenhagen, organized after the murderous attack on the satirical weekly Charlie hebdo in Paris. Lars Vilks, headliner of the meeting with the French ambassador, escaped unscathed, but a 55-year-old Danish director was killed. The attacker then managed to kill a Jewish guard outside the synagogue in Copenhagen, before being shot dead in a face-to-face with Danish police.

“I am not a fanatic racist, I have no political position. I am an artist who seeks the limits, who wants to find what we can do or not and where there can be a debate ”pleaded the designer with the thick glasses.

“I try to keep my cool. The good side of things is that the people who are after me are probably poorly equipped, they are amateurs ”, he confided to AFP eleven years ago.