A DANISH court has jailed a man for nine years after finding him guilty of attempted terrorism and attempted murder for an axe attack on a cartoonist who caricatured the Prophet Mohammed.
“Mohamed Geele is sentenced to nine years in prison and expulsion from Denmark for life,” judge Ingrid Thorsboe told the court in the central Danish city of Aarhus.
The 29-year-old Somali “must also pay damages amounting to 10,000 Danish kroner ($1800) to Kurt Westergaard, as well as cover the costs of the trial”, she added.
The court had earlier found Geele guilty of attempted terrorism and attempted murder for his 2010 New Years Day attack on the 75-year-old cartoonist.
Prosecutors had requested he serve 12 years in prison before being deported back to his war-torn homeland and banned from ever returning to Denmark, while the defence asked that he only serve six years and not be forced to leave the country.
Geele broke into Westergaard’s home last year wielding an axe and screaming, “You must die! You are going to Hell!”, according to the cartoonist’s testimony in court last month.
Westergaard, who has faced numerous death threats since the publication of his drawing of Mohammed in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten in 2005, said he escaped “certain death” by rushing into a bathroom-turned-panic-room to call police.
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