Public Relations

Attack on cartoonist is great PR for panic rooms

(THE FIRST POST) - So, having a safe room installed in your home is not such a crazy idea after all. The phenomenon that first came to light with the 2002 Jodie Foster film Panic Room has finally been proved to be worth the cost and effort after the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard locked himself in his specially fortified bathroom last week and escaped certain death at the hands of an axe-wielding Somali extremist.

Seventy-five-year-old Westergaard was looking after his granddaughter Stephanie on Friday night when the attacker smashed a window and broke into his home (above) in Aarhus, Denmark’s second city.

Westergaard, who had lived in expectation of an attack ever since his cartoon of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban sparked riots throughout the Middle East in 2005-06, pressed an alarm button to summon police and then ran into his specially converted bathroom and locked himself in.

The attacker repeatedly smashed his axe against the bathroom door - but to no avail. Shouting “I’ll be back”, he then left the house to confront the police. He managed to smash a police car window with the axe before being shot in the hand and knee. According to Danish intelligence, he is connected to Al-Shabaab, a Somali terror group.

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