Swedish Artist Lars Vilks Known For Prophet Muhammad Sketch Killed In Car Crash

Vilks, who was mostly unknown outside Sweden before his sketch of the Prophet Muhammad with a dog’s body after which he received death threats.

Swedish artist Lars Vilks (AFP Photo)

New Delhi: Swedish artist, Lars Vilks who was under police protection since 2007 was killed in a traffic accident along with two police officers who were travelling with him. The 75-year-old artist was travelling in a civilian police vehicle that collided with a truck near the town of Markaryd in southern Sweden.

Vilks, who was mostly unknown outside Sweden before his sketch of the Prophet Muhammad with a dog’s body after which he received death threats.

On Sunday, Vilks along with two plainclothes policemen were travelling in a civilian vehicle when it met with a head-on crash with a truck. While Vilks and the police officers died on the spot, the 45-year-old truck driver was severely injured and he was flown to a nearby hospital Carina Persson, police chief for southern Sweden told reporters according to AP.

The officer said that the police car, which had left Stockholm and was heading south, veered into the path of the truck and both vehicles burst into flames. The accident occurred near Markaryd, some 100 km northeast of Malmo, Sweden’s third-largest city.

The cause of the accident was under investigation.

In the 2007 sketch, Vilks had drawn a sketch of the Prophet Muhammad with a dog’s body offending the Muslim community. Dogs are considered unclean by conservative Muslims, and Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet. 

Vilks initially planned to display the drawing at an exhibit at a Swedish cultural heritage centre, but the drawing was removed over security concerns. It went largely unnoticed until a Swedish newspaper printed the drawing with an editorial defending the freedom of expression.

The Al-Qaeda put a bounty on Vilks’ head. In 2010, two men tried to burn down his house in southern Sweden. In 2014, a woman from Pennsylvania pleaded guilty in a plot to kill him. Over the years he continued to face threats to his life, in the following year during a free-speech seminar that Vilks attended in Copenhagen, Denmark, was attacked by a lone gunman who killed a Danish film director and wounded three police officers.