Norwegian police have arrested a suspect who was preparing a deadly attack against a Danish cartoonist behind a controversial caricature of the Prophet Mohammed, a Norwegian newspaper reported Saturday.

The suspect, who is in his 30s, was detained Tuesday after Norwegian intelligence discovered Kurt Westergaard was the target of an assassination plot involving automatic weapons and explosives, according to the Dagbladet daily.

Westergaard revealed earlier this week that he had cut short a visit to Norway after police caught wind of a possible attack against him.

He had been scheduled to attend the launch in Oslo Tuesday of a children's book for which he provided the illustrations, but he cancelled and returned to Denmark on Monday night.

The 76-year-old has already been the victim of a murder attempt and numerous death threats after drawing the most controversial of the 12 cartoons of the Prophet that appeared in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, depicting his turban with a lit fuse in it.

Westergaard, who lives with round-the-clock security, was attacked by an axe-wielding 29-year-old Somali man who broke into his home in January 2010. The attacker was later handed a 10-year jail sentence for attempted murder.