Plot to kill Swedish cartoonist foiled

Irish police have arrested seven people suspected of plotting to assassinate Swedish artist Lars Vilks over a series of drawings in which he depicted Mohammad with the body of a dog, reports Dagens Nyheter. The four men and three women, who are from Algeria, Croatia, Palestine, Libya and the United States, have not, according to The Irish Times, been linked to al-Qaeda. Vilks has been living under police protection since 2007, when the cartoons were published in local newspaper Nerikes Allehanda, prompting protests in a number of Muslim countries. At the time, Dagens Nyheter explained that al-Qaeda put a price of 100,000 dollars on Vilks's head. When asked by DN if he regretted the drawings, Viks responded: "The fact that nothing is sacred is a positive value in the Western World. We cannot make exceptions for particular religions."