Copenhegan: The Danish newspaper Berlingske has republished cartoons on Islamic themes from the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, as part of its coverage of the attack which killed 12 people in Paris on Wednesday. The Thursday print edition of Berlingske, available online on Wednesday night, showed several past front pages from the French magazine. Among them was one depicting the Prophet Mohammad and another about sharia law.
Such images provoked angry reactions from some Muslims when originally published by Charlie Hebdo, and footage of the Wednesday killings at the magazine's offices showed gunmen shouting "we have avenged the Prophet Mohammad". Berlingske's Editor in Chief Lisbeth Knudsen said her newspaper's action in republishing the cartoons was not a protest.
"We will print them as documentation of what kind of a magazine it was that has been hit by this terrible event," Knudsen told news agency BNB. The managing editor of Corriere della Sera, Italy's leading newspaper, said in a video editorial on Wednesday that his daily would also republish Charlie Hebdo's cartoons.
When another Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, in 2005 published 12 cartoons by various artists, most of which depicted the Prophet Mohammad, it sparked a wave of protests across the Muslim world in which at least 50 died. The media group JP/Politikens Hus, which controls Jyllands-Posten, stepped up security after the attack in Paris on Wednesday.
