Amman, Jordan - A Jordanian tabloid editor has been arrested after his newspaper published controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, while an investigation was launched into a second weekly newspaper that also printed the cartoons, a judicial source said.
The Jordanian newspapers came under fire after being the only Arab-based publications to reprint the caricatures, which have sparked protests and anger in the Muslim world.
"Jihad Momani was arrested early Saturday afternoon," the source told AFP, warning that the editor of another newspaper could also face arrest.
Momani, editor-in-chief of the weekly gossip newspaper Shihane, was fired from his job on Friday after his newspaper printed three of the cartoons.
Authorities also pledged to "open an investigation" into a smaller tabloid called Al-Mehwar which printed the caricatures in its January 26 edition, the judicial source said.
"The fact alone that this weekly (Al-Mehwar) reproduced these cartoons renders its editor-in-chief Hashem al-Khalidi responsible before the law," the source said.
"Khalidi's arrest is only a matter of time," he added.
Al-Mehwar had reprinted the 12 cartoons to accompany an article on widespread denunciation of the images, and claimed to be the "first Arab newspaper to have alerted the Arab world to these cartoons, discovered on the Internet."
The cartoons were first published in September by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and have since reappeared in a number of European publications.
Shihane published the drawings on Thursday, and the paper's publisher subsequently pulled all editions from the newsstands.
The cartoons had appeared along an editorial by Momani that read:
"Muslims of the world, be reasonable... what brings more prejudice against Islam, these caricatures or pictures of a hostage-taker slashing the throat of his victim in front of the cameras or a suicide bomber who blows himself up during a wedding ceremony in Amman?"
Momani later expressed his "deep regret and guilt for the serious mistake committed involuntarily by Shihane," according to a letter published by the official Petra news agency.
Jordan's King Abdullah II said Friday that insulting the Prophet Mohammed was "a crime that cannot be justified under the pretext of freedom of expression."
His words were seen by security forces as a signal to take action against the newspapers.
Government spokesman Nasser Jawdeh had also expressed the "government's condemnation" and called for "adequate measures" to be taken.
Islam forbids any image of the prophet and considers any such depiction as a form of blasphemy.
The cartoons included one drawing of the prophet as a knife-wielding bedouin and another of the prophet wearing a time bomb-shaped turban.