Muhammad cartoonist Lars Vilks dies in road crash

A Swedish artist who lived under police protection after receiving death threats for sketching the Prophet Muhammad with a dog’s body has died in a road crash, according to reports.

Lars Vilks (75) was reportedly travelling in a civilian police car which collided with a truck near the town of Markaryd in southern Sweden.

He died along with two police officers who were also in the car, according to reports.

“This is a very tragic incident. It is now important to all of us that we do everything we can to investigate what happened and what caused the collision,” Swedish police said in a statement yesterday.

“Initially, there is nothing that points to anyone else being involved.”

Most Muslims consider any depiction of the founder of Islam as offensive.

Since the publication of the cartoons, Mr Vilks had been living under round-the-clock police guard following threats against his life. He had a bounty put on his head and his house was fire-bombed.

In 2015, one person was killed in Copenhagen, Denmark, at a meeting meant to mark the 25th anniversary of an Iranian fatwa against British writer Salman Rushdie, which Mr Vilks attended.

Mr Vilks was widely seen as the intended target.

He had said that the cartoons were not intended to provoke Muslims, but to challenge political correctness in the art world.

Police were yet to reveal the identity of those killed in Sunday’s crash, but Mr Vilks’s partner confirmed his death to Dagens Nyheter newspaper in Sweden.

Mr Vilks was largely unknown outside Sweden before his Muhammad drawing in 2007 after which he lived under police protection.

Dogs are considered unclean by conservative Muslims, and Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favourable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.

Al Qaida put a bounty on Mr Vilks’ head. In 2010, two men tried to burn down his house in southern Sweden.

Last year, a woman from Pennsylvania pleaded guilty in a plot to try to kill him.

Before the Mohammed sketch, he was best known for building a sculpture made of driftwood in a nature reserve in southern Sweden without permission, triggering a lengthy legal battle.

He was fined, but the seaside sculpture draws tens of thousands of visitors a year.