COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – A Somali man armed with an axe  and suspected of links with al Qaeda broke into the home of a  Danish cartoonist whose drawings of the Prophet Mohammad caused  global Muslim outrage and was shot and wounded by police.

Hours later, the 28-year-old was stretchered into court yesterday and denied charges of trying to kill Kurt Westergaard.

The Somali also denied trying to murder a police officer at  Westergaard’s home in the town of Aarhus late on Friday after he  broke into the house armed with a knife and an axe, police said.

Danish police intelligence said they believed the “attempted  assassination … is terror related” and accused the man, who  was not named, of having links with Somalia’s al-Shabaab  militant group as well as al Qaeda militants.

The cartoonist, 74, pushed a panic button, fled to a safe  room and was unhurt when police arrived. His grand-daughter was  in the house during the attack. Police could not confirm reports  he had tried to break down the safe room door with the axe.

Westergaard, who in 2005 depicted Prophet Mohammad with a  bomb in his turban, has been under police protection since his  caricatures of the Prophet led to death threats.

The Somali man appeared in court on a stretcher with a hand  and leg in plaster casts due to gunshot wounds from a police  officer who had narrowly dodged the axe thrown at him by the  intruder who was trying to evade arrest, police said. The accused did not speak in court, but denied the charges  through his lawyer.

The Security and Intelligence Service PET, a department of  the national police, said in a statement: “It is PET’s  impression that the attempted assassination of the cartoonist  Kurt Westergaard is terror related.”

The man, the PET said, “has close relations to the Somali  terror organisation al-Shabaab and al Qaeda leaders in East  Africa, and he is also suspected of having been involved in  terror-related activities during his stay in East Africa.”

It also accused him of involvement in a terror-related  network with links to Denmark, where he has a residence permit.

“For some time this network has been the subject of PET’s  investigation without, however, this having any relation to the  cartoonist Kurt Westergaard,” the PET said. Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said that the  incident was not only an attack on Westergaard “but also an  attack on our open society and democracy.”

The court in Aarhus remanded the man in custody for four  weeks to allow further investigation before a trial, East  Jutland police inspector Ole Madsen said.

“At the moment he is charged with two murder attempts,”  Madsen told Reuters, adding that the next court hearing was set  for Jan. 27. The police can then ask for permission to hold the  man longer or can proceed to a trial.