More than 300 people have purchased the controversial ‘Turban Bomb’ cartoon despite the seller’s website being cyber-hacked

The website of the International Free Press Society (IFPS) has been hacked one day after it began selling signed prints of one of the infamous Mohammed cartoons to raise funds for free speech.

The IFPS was set up by the Danish Free Press Society at the start of 2009 to promote free speech worldwide. To raise funds for its activities, it began selling 1,000 prints of the Kurt Westergaard cartoon depicting the prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban.

The cyber attack forced the closure of the IFPS website early on 9 April, preventing the organisation from selling its prints temporarily. The organisation has now launched a temporary site at http://freepresssociety.blogspot.com to handle orders.

‘This was an attack against IFPS as an organisation and against our mission to support freedom of expression worldwide. Happily it had the effect of increasing support for our activities as the word spread that we were being threatened,’ said Lars Hedegaard, president of the IFPS.

Hedegaard said that orders for the $250 prints had been coming in from around the world, including countries such as the US, Germany, Bulgaria and Hong Kong.

While the original website was offline, demand for orders greatly increased at the Danish headquarters of the IFPS via phone, email and fax, with more than 300 copies being ordered during the website outage.

The cartoon originally appeared with 11 others in Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten during 2005 and caused outrage in the Muslim world. Westergaard had to go into hiding for more than a year with police protection after a murder plot against him emerged.