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July 25, 2006
Norway: Islamist Mullah Krekar's Deportation Could Take Years
We last wrote on Mullah Krekar's deportation case on July 19. The Norwegian authorities were at that time still waiting to deport the supporter of Bin Laden to Iraq, on condition that the country would be "safe".
They were also awaiting guarantees that Krekar would not be killed or tortured by the Iraqi government upon his return. The situation of Krekar's "asylum" has become something of a farce. An asylum seeker for fourteen years in Norway, Krekar had nonetheless returned to the country he fled from as a "refugee" on numerous occasions.
On one of his visits, in December 2001, he managed to set up a terrorist group in Kurdish Iraq, called Ansar al-Islam fi Kurdistan or "Supporters of Islam in Kurdistan". This group has murdered women on streets for not wearing the burka, it has burned down girls' school and a beauty salons, and has engaged in suicide attacks. These included an attack upon an office of the US Department of Defense in September 200, which killed three people.
Since March 18 this year, the Norwegian authorities have been vacillating about the terrorist's safety in Iraq, while claiming that he will be deported.
Bjarne Hakon Hanssen, Norway's Minister of Labor and Social Inclusion, had then said that Krekar would be sent back within two months. On July 19, it was announced that the country had still not received guarantees for the terrorist's safety.
The agency responsible for obtaining "security guarantees" for Krekar is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (UD). Aftenposten reports that its information adviser, Frode Andersen, has said the ministry is monitoring the reform process in Iraq and the relationship and central government and the local government, in this case that of the Kurdish region.
Andersen is showing the spine of a jellyfish by stating that he is not sure who can actually make the guarantees of "security" and that it is not up to his department to deport the terrorist, but the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) instead.
An analyst from the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), researcher Henrik Thune, is drawing a very pessimistic assessment of the scenario, and stating that the deportation of the terrorist in current circumstances could take anything from months to even years to achieve.
Thune states that the issue of Kurds' status in Iraq in unlikely to be resolved, and any guarantees will not happen in the immediate future. He thinks a few months would be the most optimistic prediction.
But if Norway chooses to set an absolute criterion of Krekar's safety, then the timeline stretches potentially to years. He said: "In today's Iraq there is no one who can guarantee a person's safety."
Unfortunately, in today's Norway, where policies are designed "by committee" there is no-one who can guarantee either leadership or the responsibility for taking control of this issue.
I am starting to listen more closely to the scathing words of The Observer at Norwegian News about his country's government and its departments. The PST (Norway's Intelligence Agency) has claimed that Krekar is an active threat to Norway's national security, but "The government are desperately trying to convince us that they're doing everything humanly possible to get rid of him, but he's still here, free to do whatever he wants. The authorities haven't even had the sense to lock him up."
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at July 25, 2006 5:45 PM
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