Publish and be damned!

At least 17 Danish newspapers printed a controversial cartoon of Prophet Mohammed Wednesday, vowing to defend freedom of expression a day after police foiled a murder plot against the cartoonist.

Three of the country's biggest dailies were among those that published the cartoon, which featured the prophet's head with a turban that looked like a bomb with a lit fuse.

The caricature was one of 12 cartoons published in September 2005 by the Jyllands-Posten daily which sparked violent protests in a number of Muslim countries in January and February 2006.

On Tuesday, Danish police said they had arrested three people, a Dane of Moroccan origin and two Tunisian nationals, suspected of plotting to kill the cartoonist of the turban cartoon, Kurt Westergaard.

The newspapers that printed the cartoon on Wednesday said they did so to take a stand against self-censorship.

"Freedom of expression gives you the right to think, to speak and to draw what you like... no matter how many terrorist plots there are," conservative broadsheet Berlingske Tidende wrote in an editorial.

The newspaper -- which had not previously printed the caricature despite the massive controversy that engulfed Denmark for months in 2006 -- urged "the Danish media to stand united against fanaticism".

Tabloid Ekstra Bladet meanwhile published all 12 of the original cartoons.

The Danish press has unanimously condemned the alleged murder plot against Westergaard, who has lived in hiding for the past three months.