Berlin - A political cartoonist from a leading German daily has received death threats, the paper said on Tuesday, after publishing a caricature showing the Iranian national soccer team wearing belts of explosives next to four German soldiers.
Caricaturist Klaus Stutt-mann said the idea of the cartoon, published in the Friday edition of the Tagesspiegel daily, was to challenge calls from some politicians for soldiers to provide security during this summer's soccer World Cup in Germany.
But since the cartoon was picked up by an Internet website serving Iranian soccer fans at the weekend, Stuttmann has been flooded with hate mail, including death threats, and has received a letter of protest from the Iranian embassy here, the paper said.
The paper blamed the affair on a "misunderstanding" and said it had not intended to offend anyone.
"We regret the Iranian reaction, which we can only explain as due to a lack of understanding of the political debate within Germany," the paper wrote on Tuesday. "Of course neither Mr Stuttmann nor the Tagesspiegel wanted to question the integrity of the Iranian soccer players."
The flap comes amid widespread protest in the Muslim world against caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, first published in a Danish paper.
