MESOP : MULLAH KREKAR FACES HOUSE ARREST

AP / AFP – 21 Jans 2015 – OSLO, Norway,— Norwegian police have ordered house arrest for an Iraqi Kurdish Islamic radical Mullah Krekar who is to be released next Saturday after serving time for making death threats against politicians and fellow immigrants, AP reported.Mullah Krekar, his real name Najmaddin Faraj Ahmad, will be held at an asylum center more than 600 kilometers (370 miles) from his home in Oslo, the Oslo Police District said Tuesday.

Mullah Krekar, will be released on January 24 from a Norway prison where he’s been serving time after threatening the lives of three Kurds and Conservative politician Erna Solberg, who’s now Norway’s prime minister.Krekar’s lawyer described the decision as a violation of human rights and warned of legal action.The 58-year-old Kurd, who came to Norway as a refugee in 1991, was convicted in 2005 of making death threats against three other Kurdish immigrants who he said had insulted Islam and of threatening Norwegian officials to try to force a reversal of a court order to deport him to Iraq.

Mulla Krekar, who led the Ansar al-Islam organization, founded in 2001, as a merger of Jund al-Islam (Soldiers of Islam), and a splinter group from Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (IMK).

Ansar al-Islam group listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and Iraqi Kurdistan government. The group is also suspected in suicide bombings of coalition forces in Iraqi Kurdistan, Krekar in one of the most wanted in Iraqi Kurdistan region on charges of terrorist attacks in the Kurdish region, especially the largest Kurdish political party PUK. Local officials still claim Krekar was responsible for the violence and have demanded he be extradited back to Iraqi Kurdistan. Krekar has immigrated to Norway in 1991 after “Islamic scholarship” and training in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 1980s. Earlier his pictures from Afghanistan has been published in many Islamic web sites and Krekar has also confirmed via his lawyer Brynjar Meling that he had meeting with Osama bin Ladin already in 1988 in Peshawar in Pakistan. According him, “the reason with meeting with Osama bin Laden was to get financial support for children”. (Avisens Nyhets Byra, ANB, 27 of February 2003).