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FM visits Middle East for cooperation against Isis

Martin Lidegaard, calling the militant jihadists one of the biggest security threats in recent times, will be the first Danish foreign minister to visit Iran in nearly a decade.

Published: 6 September 2014 20:40 CEST

FM visits Middle East for cooperation against Isis

Martin Lidegaard. Photo: Erik Refner/Scanpix

Foreign Minister Martin Lidegaard said Saturday he was travelling to the Middle East to strengthen cooperation against Isis extremists, a day after the US called on allies to defeat them.

"My main message will be that we must work even harder to counter violent extremism," Lidegaard said in a statement in which he added that Isis was "one of the biggest, if not the biggest security threat in recent times".

See also: US recruits Denmark for fight against Isis

Lidegaard, who will visit Saudi Arabia and Iran, said on Friday at the NATO summit in the British city of Newport that Denmark was ready to join a coalition to fight extremists in Iraq and Syria suggested by US President Barack Obama.

In the statement, the foreign ministry explained that both "the regional actors' contribution to resolving the crisis, and how the international community can fight the growing threat of violent extremism" were on the journey's agenda.

Lidegaard is the first Danish foreign minister to visit Iran since 2005.

Isis, a Sunni extremist group, has gained prominence in recent months, declaring an Islamic "caliphate" in regions under its control in Iraq and Syria.

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Ex-jihadi housewife jailed in Norway for joining IS

The Kurdish-run al-Hol camp which holds suspected relatives of Islamic State fighters.Photo: Delil SOULEIMAN / AFP

The Oslo court sentenced the Norwegian-Pakistani woman to three and a half years in prison for “participating in a terrorist organisation” by taking care of her household and enabling her three husbands to fight.

“By travelling to an area controlled by IS in Syria… by moving in and living with her husbands, taking care of the children and various tasks at home, the defendant enabled her three husbands to actively participate in IS fighting,” judge Ingmar Nilsen said as he read out the verdict.

Being a housewife to three successive husbands did not render her a passive bystander, the judge said.

“On the contrary, she was a supporter who enabled the jihad, looked after her three husbands at home and raised the new generation of IS recruits,” he said.

The young woman, who admitted having “radical ideas” at the time, left for Syria in early 2013 to join an Islamist fighter, Bastian Vasquez, who was fighting the regime.

Although she did not take up arms herself, she was accused of having allowed her husbands to go fight while taking care of her two children and household chores.

The trial was the first prosecution in Norway of someone who had returned after joining IS.

“This is a special case,” prosecutor Geir Evanger acknowledged during the trial.

“This is the first time that, to put it bluntly, someone has been charged for being a wife and mother.”

The prosecution had called for a four-year sentence, while the defence had called for her acquittal and immediately appealed Tuesday’s verdict.

The woman’s lawyer, Nils Christian Nordhus, argued that his client had quickly wanted to leave Syria after being subjected to domestic violence.

She had also been a victim of human trafficking because she had been held against her will, he added.

But the judge stressed that she had participated in the organisation “knowingly” and of her own will.

The woman was repatriated to Norway in early 2020 on humanitarian grounds with her two children, including a young boy described as seriously ill.

At least four other Norwegian women and their children are being held in Kurdish-controlled camps in Syria.

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