MESOP NEWS “THE LAST DAYS OF EUROPE” : TERRORISTS GO FREE ! MULLAH KREKAR

Norway frees Kurdish Islamic radical after Italy cancels extradition request

30 Nov 2016 – MESOP / AFP OSLO,— Norway’s public prosecutor ordered on Wednesday the release of a radical Iraqi Kurdish imam after Italian authorities withdrew a year-old extradition request linked to suspicions he had plotted attacks.

Mullah Krekar, the one-time leader of the Ansar al-Islam militant group, was arrested in Norway in November 2015 as part of a series of arrests across Europe. Italian prosecutors later asked for his extradition.But Norway’s Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) said Italian authorities had withdrawn the request for the cleric’s extradition, without clearly explaining the reasons.

A DPP statement said it was “ordering the release of Mullah Krekar.”

Prime Minister Erna Solberg bowed to the ruling on Krekar, who has been a thorn in the side of successive Norwegian governments. “This is something we have to accept,” she told a news conference, saying it was not up to politicians to decide.Though deemed a threat to Norway’s national security, Krekar has not been deported to Iraq because authorities there could not guarantee he would not be executed.Krekar’s lawyer, Brynjar Meling, hailed the withdrawal of the extradition request as “a victory of the law.”

“This shows that it is not possible to conceal an expulsion behind a request for extradition. This decision is a defeat for those who tried,” he told Norwegian media.

Krekar was released from custody Wednesday.

“I had no idea I was getting out. I had received no information,” he told daily VG, saying it was “great” to be free.

Last week, Norway’s Supreme Court had approved the extradition to Italy of Krekar, who came to Norway as a refugee from Iraq in 1991 and has spent several periods in jail.

Last year, Italian authorities said that at least 15 suspected members of a militant Islamist group including Krekar were arrested in six European countries, accused of planning attacks in Europe and the Middle East.Krekar’s arrest last year took place in prison, where he was already serving an 18-month sentence for making death threats against a Kurdish man and giving an interview in which he encouraged other people to commit criminal acts.Norway’s DPP said the letter from Italy’s justice ministry sent on Nov. 25 said an Italian court ruling in March had voided the basis for extradition.The DPP said the Italian letter did not explain the March ruling nor say why it had taken so long to withdraw the extradition request.Krekar was released in March 2016 following a ruling by the Court of Appeals that overturned a previous Oslo District Court decision in October, in which Krekar was sentenced to one and a half years in prison for threatening the life of Halmat Goran, a Kurd who had burned a copy of the Koran.

Krekar, 60, has previously been convicted of threatening Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, making other death threats and for praising the slaying of cartoonists at the French satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, in 2015.

Krekar said in 2015 only the Islamic State can “fulfill our ambitions and dreams,” . “The Islamic State is not something strange; it is the only element that can fulfill our ambitions and dreams,” he said in an Al Jazeera interview.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 Laden already in 1988 in Peshawar in Pakistan.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, rekar in one of the most wanted in Iraqi Kurdistan region on charges of terrorist attacks in the Kurdish region. Local officials still claim Krekar was responsible for the violence and have demanded he be extradited back to Iraqi Kurdistan. www.mesop.de