**Police have released three of the seven Muslims arrested in the Irish Republic over an alleged plot to murder a Swedish cartoonist.**They were freed without charge after three-and-a-half days of questioning.
The trio were held on suspicion of plotting to kill Lars Vilks over a cartoon he drew depicting the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog.
The cartoon was used in a Swedish newspaper in 2007 to illustrate an editorial on freedom of expression.
Two women and one man, who were among those arrested in Waterford and Cork, were released on Friday night.
‘Jihad Jane’
The group included nationals from Algeria, Libya, the Palestinian territories, Croatia and the US.
Three men and one woman remain in custody.
The arrests on Tuesday were part of an international investigation into alleged death threats against Mr Vilks.
It came hours after an American woman was charged by US authorities with plotting to kill the cartoonist.
Colleen LaRose - who described herself online as “Jihad Jane” - was detained last October in Philadelphia.
Unconfirmed reports say she travelled to Ireland in September and met several of the suspects who were arrested there.
In 2007, a group linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq offered a $100,000 (£66,000)reward for killing Mr Vilks, and a 50% bonus if he was “slaughtered like a lamb” by having his throat cut.
The Vilks cartoon was published about a year-and-a-half after a series of depictions of the Prophet Muhammad in Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten paper caused protests by Muslims around the world.