THE Danish artist Kurt Westergaard, famous for sketches of Muhammad who caused outrage in the Muslim world, died at the age of 86.
The news of his death was announced by his family in the Danish media today.
Westergaard died in his sleep after a long period of ill health, his family told the Berlingske newspaper.
The illustrator was the creator of 12 sketches, published by the daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten under the title “The face of Muhammad”.
The sketches initially went almost unnoticed, but after two weeks, the first protest in Copenhagen followed.
Anger against Denmark escalated throughout the Muslim world in February 2006.
The violence associated with the cartoons culminated in the attack in 2015 on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, which killed 12 people. The newspaper had reprinted the sketches in 2012.
Westergaard had worked for Jyllands-Posten as an illustrator since the mid-1980s, and according to Berlingske, this sketch of Muhammad had indeed been printed once before, but without causing much controversy.
In the last years of his life, Westergaard, like others related to similar cartoons, lived under police protection in a secret address.
In early 2010, Danish police arrested a 28-year-old Somali man armed with a knife at Westergaard’s house, who planned to kill him.
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