Cartoon: 200 protest in Sudan

2008-02-22 18:16

Khartoum - About 200 Sudanese demonstrated against Denmark in downtown Khartoum on Friday after Danish newspapers reprinted a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad deemed offensive by Muslims.

Angry Muslim men dressed in traditional white robes marched through closed-off streets followed by fellow protestors driving at a snail's pace in air-conditioned cars, under the close watch of security forces.

The crowd chanted for Sudan to end diplomatic relations with Denmark, boycott Danish produce and for al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden to attack Copenhagen, said an AFP photographer.

The protest was organised by students in the National Congress Party of President Omar al-Beshir, whose regime sheltered bin Laden during the 1990s.

Last week, a number of Danish newspapers published the cartoon, vowing to defend freedom of expression a day after Danish police said they had foiled a plot to murder the cartoonist.

The caricature, featuring the prophet's head with a turban that looked like a bomb with a lit fuse, was one of 12 cartoons published in September 2005 by the Jyllands-Posten newspaper that sparked bloody riots in the Islamic world.

Danish police arrested a Dane of Moroccan origin and two Tunisians suspected of plotting to kill the creator of the turban cartoon, Kurt Westergaard.

- AFP