Latvian-Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who has survived a number of murder plots over drawing a cartoon depicting Islamic prophet Mohammad has died in a car crash in Sweden, Swedish news portal TheLocal.se reports.
Born in 1946, the art theoretician and self-taught artist had lived under police protection due to death threats over his 2007 Prophet Muhammed drawing. Vilks and two police officers were killed in a collision with an oncoming truck, Swedish police confirmed to French news agency AFP, and the accident is currently not being treated caused by as suspicious.
«The person we were protecting and two colleagues died in this inconceivable and terribly sad tragedy,» Swedish regional police head Carina Persson stated.
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The lethal even occurred on Sunday, October 3, near the small town Markaryd when the car Vilks was travelling in crashed into an oncoming truck. Both vehicles caught fire and the truck driver was sent to hospital for treatment, police said adding that the cause of the accident was unclear. The self-taught painter and sculptor had been under police protection since 2010, after his cartoon of Muhammed with a dog’s body published in Swedish newspapers three years earlier prompted outrage among those who consider depictions of the Muslim prophet deeply offensive or blasphemous. The Islamic extremist terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda offered a US 100,000 reward for Vilks’ murder, The Local.se reports.
Lars Vilks, Latvian-Swedish artist, author of Mohammad cartoon, dies in car crash
