Danish editor behind Mohammed cartoons clashes with paper

The Danish ex-editor who commissioned the Mohammed cartoons that triggered deadly protests a decade ago on Friday accused the Jyllands-Posten newspaper of trying to silence him, saying it had let “the jihadists” win.
In a book to be released on Monday, titled “De besatte” (“The obsessed”), Flemming Rose accuses the paper’s management of hypocrisy, claiming it backed him in public while doing everything it could to silence him in private.
“The drama and tragedy is that the only ones who have won are the jihadists,” he told the weekly Weekendavisen newspaper.
Rose said that rules for what he could say and write about the controversial cartoons and related subjects had been outlined in a 2011 agreement proposed by former editor-in-chief Jorn Mikkelsen, the former chief executive of the company that owned the paper, Lars Munch, and the company’s former chairman Jorgen Ejbol.
Among the rules were a ban on taking part in TV and radio programmes and refraining from commenting on the cartoons.
Rose, who left the paper last year, also said he had been accused of being “deeply disloyal” and “obsessed” with the debate prompted by the cartoons.
“You have grandchildren, don’t you think about them?” Ejbol is alleged to have said in 2015 after Rose agreed to interview the Dutch and anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders at a public event.
Jyllands-Posten’s owner, JP/Politikens Hus, did not comment on the book, but Munch, now the group’s chairman, said in a statement that “it wasn’t about Flemming Rose, it was about the safety of more than 2,000 loyal employees.”
Rose was the culture editor of the right-wing Jyllands-Posten in 2005 when he commissioned 12 satirical cartoons of the Islamic prophet, triggering deadly protests in some Muslim countries.
The cartoons were also published in 2006 in French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, where Islamist gunmen killed 12 people last year.
Rose, 58, still lives under police protection because of death threats made against him, and there have been numerous foiled terror plots against Jyllands-Posten, which has had to take extensive security measures.