Swedish artist receives telephone threat from Somalia

Stockholm - A Swedish artist who angered Muslims in 2007 for his caricature of the Prophet Mohammed as a dog said Monday he had received two threatening phone calls from Somalia.

Lars Vilks said a man who spoke poor Swedish asked him if he was aware of what had happened in neighbouring Denmark to newspaper cartoonist Kurt Westergaard who late Friday survived an attack on his home.

Westergaard's controversial cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban was one of 12 images published in September 2005 by Jyllands-Posten. The cartoons sparked outrage among Muslims and violent protests worldwide in early 2006.

Late Friday a Somali-born man armed with an axe and a knife broke into Westergaard's home in western Denmark but was arrested by police alerted by the cartoonist who sought refuge in a specially secured room.

'I said, of course I knew about it,' Vilks told the online edition of the Helsingborgs Dagblad newspaper.

The man said several times 'they were coming' before the call ended, Vilks said. He filed a complaint with police later Monday.

Vilks established that the phone number on his display was from Somalia.

The Swedish artist in 2007 received several threats and a bounty of 100,000 dollars was placed on his head by an Iraq-based insurgency group after his caricature was published.

Source:monstersandcritics.com/

Somalia: Newly Foreign Jihadists Pour into Border Town of Dhobley (RBC NEWS)

Dhobley, (RBC Radio) Reports from Dhobley, Somalia’s southern border town say that newly foreign jihadists have been pouring into the border towns of Somalia in recent days, joining forces with local fighters to turn the country into an Al-Qaeda heaven.

Some of twenty western and African fighers had gathered into Dhobley, where Al Shabab insurgents have recently taken control from Hisbul Islam militia, an other rival group.

A local resident in the area who spoke to RBC Radio in a condition of anonymity said that nearly twenty new foreign jihadists had came the district as they begin to meet with Al Shabab militia leaders in Dhobley.

The Local residents described seeing foreigners, some with turbans wrapped around their faces, careering around the streets in pickup trucks bristling with weapons.

The reports also says that Al Shabab miliitia who recently seized most of the border towns in the southern part of the country would consider to use the foreign fighters as special forces if Kenya and Ethiopia, two neighbouring countries continue any military acts against Al Shabab, as foreign fighters know better war tactics.

There had been an nightly curfew over Dhobley district following the arrival of the foreing fighters.

Sources close to the Al Shabab’s led administration in Kismayo, the capital of Lower Jubba region has confirmed that the region is now full of foreing jihadists, mostly from United States, Saudi Arabia And Afghanistan.

Somalia now shelters an estimated 450 foreign fighters who are working with Al Shabab, a home-grown hardline Islamist group that has spearheaded a bloody insurgency since 2006.

Foreign fighters who wanted for links to Al-Qaeda have long used Somalia as a backyard, their numbers have swollen dramatically in 2009, experts say.

Source:raxanreeb.com/