Cartoonist vows to sell Muhammad row drawing
Matthew Campbell
A http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3441”.
The small, ink cartoon is locked in a bank vault as Kurt Westergaard, 72, hides from Islamic http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1996 face on his plight.
“At my age,” he said from his police safe house last week, “you are not so much afraid any more.”
His drawing, featuring a bomb in the prophet’s turban, is by far the most famous of a dozen “Muhammad cartoons” published three years ago by Jyllands Posten, the Danish newspaper Westergaard works for.
Auction houses were voicing doubts about the wisdom of putting such a controversial item on sale.“It’s too hot to handle,” said Franck Lombrail, an auctioneer in Paris. “It would represent a risk for the public at the sale,” he added.
Flemming Rose, cultural editor of the Jyllands-Posten, called the cartoon “a great cultural icon of the 21st century”, and thought it was only fair for Westergaard to make money out of it. Rose said that on a visit to America last year he had autographed posters of the cartoon collection, which had sold for £500 each.
Westergaard has been moving from one safe house to the next with his wife, a retired kindergarten teacher, since police foiled a plot to behead him in his home in November. Several Danish newspapers recently reprinted the drawing in solidarity with him, prompting fresh protests.
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