10 People Killed in Libya Cartoon Riot

Staff and agencies
18 February, 2006


By KHALED EL-DEEB, 5 minutes ago

TRIPOLI, Libya - Libyans set fire to the Italian consulate in a riot that left at least 10 people dead, the bloodiest protest yet against the Prophet Muhammad cartoons that have roiled the Muslim world.

A day earlier, a Pakistani cleric announced a $1 million bounty for killing the cartoonist. Denmark, where a newspaper first published the cartoons, temporarily closed its embassy in Pakistan and advised its citizens to leave the country.

At least 29 people have been killed in protests across the Muslim world. Some 1,000 Muslims protested peacefully in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Saturday, carrying banners reading "We love our Prophet" and "Down with enemies of Islam."

Rioters charged the consular compound and set fire to the first floor of the building, the Italian Foreign Ministry said.

Antonio Simoes-Concalves, an Italian consular official in Benghazi, Libya‘s second-largest city, said Libyan police were not able to control the crowd.

About an hour after Simoes-Concalves spoke, Bellantone said the rioters had dispersed.

Libyan television showed police officers carrying Kalashnikov rifles in the street outside the consulate.

Calderoli wore the T-shirt beneath a suit on Friday. Hours later, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi asked for his resignation, the ANSA news agency reported.

There was no demonstration outside the Italian Embassy in Tripoli, a possible indication of greater state control in the capital. Politics is tightly controlled in Libya — a former Italian colony — and open dissent is rare.

In Pakistan, the cleric Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi said the mosque and the religious school he leads would give a $25,000 reward and a car for killing the cartoonist who drew the caricatures — considered blasphemous by many Muslims. He said a local jewelers‘ association would also give $1 million, but no representative of the association was available to confirm the offer.

Qureshi did not name any cartoonist and he did not appear aware that 12 different people had drawn the pictures.

A Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, first printed the caricatures in September. The newspaper has since apologized to Muslims for the cartoons, one of which shows Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban. Other Western newspapers, mostly in Europe, have reprinted the pictures, asserting their news value and the right to freedom of expression.

Mogens Blicher Bjerregaard, president of the Danish Journalist Union and spokesman for the cartoonists, condemned the bounty offer.

"It is totally absurd what is happening. The cartoonists just did their job and they did nothing illegal," he said.

He said the cartoonists — who have been living under police protection since last year — are aware of the reward and are "feeling bad about the whole situation."

Pakistani intelligence officials have said scores of members of radical and militant Islamic groups have incited violence in a bid to undermine President Gen. Pervez Musharraf‘s government, a close ally of the United States.

On Friday, police confined the leader of the militant group Jamaat al-Dawat, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, to his home to stop him from addressing supporters, his spokesman Yahya Mujahid said. A senior police official in Lahore confirmed Saeed‘s detention and said the government had ordered police to restrict the movement of religious leaders who might address rallies and to round up religious activists "who could be any threat to law and order."

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.