COPENHAGEN, May 2: A Danish newspaper said on Tuesday it had filed a defamation lawsuit against a lawyer representing a group of Muslim organizations that sued the daily for publishing holy prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) cartoons, which sparked riots across the world.

The Jyllands-Posten sued Michael Christiani Havemann for saying its top editors ordered a cartoonists to deliberately make a “gross” drawing of the holy prophet because those solicited by freelance artists were not good enough.

The 12 cartoons published by the daily in September prompted angry mobs to attack Western targets in Muslim countries, including Lebanon, Iran and Indonesia.

Jyllands-Posten Editor in Chief Carsten Juste said Havemann’s accusations “are simply so gross and insulting that he has crossed the line for what we will accept.”

“The cartoonists were explicitly asked to freely depict the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) as they saw him, in other words without any directions from the newspaper’s side,” he said in a statement. The purpose of the cartoons was to challenge a perceived self-censorship among artists afraid to offend Islam, Juste said.

The newspaper is seeking US$16,800 in damages, and demanded a court ruling stating Havemann’s statement was incorrect.

In a March 29 news release, Havemann wrote: “According to my information, the grossest of the cartoons, the one with the bomb, was drawn by the paper’s employed cartoonist, apparently on the instructions of management because the cartoons drawn by the freelance artists were not gross enough.”

On March 29, 27 Muslim organizations represented by Havemann filed a defamation lawsuit calling the drawings “gratuitously defamatory and injurious.” They sought US$16,800 in damages from the daily. No date for a hearing has been set.—AP