A Swedish artist, known for his controversial depictions of the Prophet Muhammad, was killed in a car crash Sunday.
Since depicting the Muslim founder as a dog in 2007, 75-year-old Lars Vilks had been living under police protection due to death threats. Vilks had survived a series of assassination attempts prior to his passing.
The cartoonist was in a police car when the vehicle collided head-on with a truck on a Swedish highway. Vilks, and the two plainclothes officers assigned to protect him, all died in the car crash. The driver of the truck that collided with the police car was flown to a hospital with serious injuries.
The police vehicle reportedly veered across a guardrail and onto the wrong lanes of the highway before it collided with the truck and burst into flames. Senior police officer Stefan Sinteus said investigators are checking to see if there was a tire explosion even though the vehicle had puncture-proof tires. While the police chief for southern Sweden, Carina Persson, called the incident a simple traffic accident, Chief Prosecutor Kajsa Sundgren announced a preliminary investigation into whether "any police officer may have committed a crime in connection with the accident."
Vilks had a bounty placed on his head by al Qaeda following his 2007 image of the Prophet Muhammad. Depictions of the Prophet are generally outlawed according to Islamic law.
Despite Vilks insisting his images were meant to challenge political correctness rather than offend the Muslim religion, the cartoonist was targeted in multiple assassination attempts. He started receiving full-time police protection in 2010 after two men tried burning down his house. In 2014, a woman was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to orchestrating a hit on the artist. The next year, a gunman shot up a free-speech seminar that Vilks attended and killed two people and wounded nearly half a dozen cops.
Police have claimed they were unaware of any new threats prior to Sunday's car accident.
Source: Insider
