The students, understood to be the editor and guest editor of unofficial Clare College magazine Clareification (renamed Crucification for an issue focused on religious satire) were interrogated under Section 5 of the Public Order Act (“harassment, alarm or distress”).

Police confirmed to Index that the students were questioned last Friday, and a file has been sent to the Crown Prosecution Service, which will decide whether to press charges against the students in the coming weeks.

The magazine, circulated for free among Clare students, contained several articles ridiculing religious belief, and the front-page headlines ‘Katie Lin-O-Scopes more reliable than Bible’ (a reference to the magazine’s spoof horoscope column) and ‘Ayatollah rethinks stance on “misunderstood” Rushdie’.

The editorial stated ‘I hate Islam’. The Mohammed cartoon appeared on the back page, juxtaposed with a picture of Clare’s student president with the caption ‘One is a prophet of God, a great leader and an example to us all. The other is a violent paedophile.’

Earlier, Cambridge University had signalled that it considered the matter finished with. A spokesman for the university said the student who had guest-edited the publication had been disciplined, but that there was ‘no prospect of him being sent down’.

This is not the first time a student publication has courted controversy by publishing the cartoons. In February 2006, three people (two students and a sabbatical officer) were suspended from Cardiff University after the cartoons were published in Gair rhydd, the student union’s official newspaper.