Two editors in court in Jordan over Prophet cartoons

AMMAN -- Two Jordanian tabloid editors appeared in court on Sunday after their newspapers were the only Arab-based publications to print controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. The caricatures, which included depictions of the Muslim Prophet as a knife-wielding bedouin and another as wearing a time bomb-shaped turban, have sparked widespread protests in the Muslim world.

Hashem Al Khalidi, editor in chief of Al-Mehwar weekly, and Jihad Momani, former editor in chief of the weekly gossip newspaper Shihan who was sacked over the cartoons, are accused of offending religious sensitivities. They were released by the court after pleading not guilty to the charges, with Momani's trial due to start on February 9 and Khalidi's on February 15.

Shihan published the drawings on February 2, and the paper's publisher subsequently pulled all editions from the newsstands. The cartoons had appeared alongside an editorial by Momani appealing to Muslims to "be reasonable." Momani later expressed his "deep regret and guilt for the serious mistake committed involuntarily by Shihan" according to a letter published by the official Petra news agency.

Source: [Middle East Times]

Al-Mehwar reprinted them in its January 26 edition to accompany an article on widespread condemnation of the sketches. It claimed to be the "first Arab newspaper to have alerted the Arab world to these cartoons, discovered on the Internet".

The 12 cartoons were first published in September 2005 by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and have since reappeared in a number of European publications.

Jordan's King Abdullah II, a descendant of the Prophet, said that insulting Mohammed was "a crime that cannot be justified under the pretext of freedom of expression." His words were seen by security forces as a signal to take action against the newspapers.

Islamic custom forbids the production of any image of the Prophet and considers any such depiction as a form of blasphemy.

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