“We have a real problem here”
AP:
The leader of al Qaeda in Iraq offered money for the murder of a Swedish cartoonist and his editor who recently produced images deemed insulting to Islam, according to a statement carried by Islamist Web sites Saturday. In a half hour audio file entitled “They plotted yet God too was plotting,” Abu Omar al-Baghdadi also named the other insurgent groups in Iraq that al Qaeda was fighting and promised new attacks, particularly against the minority Yazidi sect.
“We are calling for the assassination of cartoonist Lars Vilks who dared insult our Prophet, peace be upon him, and we announce a reward during this generous month of Ramadan of $100,000 for the one who kills this criminal,” the transcript on the Web site said. The al Qaeda leader upped the reward for Mr. Vilks’s death to $150,000 if he was “slaughtered like a lamb” and offered $50,000 for the killing of the editor of Nerikes Allehanda, the Swedish paper that printed Mr. Vilks’s cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad with a dog’s body on Aug. 19…
“We have a real problem here,” Mr. Vilks told the AP by telephone. “We can only hope that Muslims in Europe and in the Western world choose to distance themselves from this and support the idea of freedom of expression.” Ulf Johansson, editor in chief of Nerikes Allehanda, said he took the bounty “more seriously” than other threats he had received. “This is more explicit. It’s not every day somebody puts a price on your head.”