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EXTREMISM

Norway to extradite Islamist preacher to Italy

Norway's government on Wednesday gave the go-ahead to extradite a fundamentalist Islamic preacher to Italy, where he has been sentenced to prison for leading a jihadist network.

Published: 12 February 2020 16:42 CET
Norway to extradite Islamist preacher to Italy
Controversial Norway-based fundamentalist preacher Mullah Krekar in court in Oslo last year. Photo: AFP

The 63-year-old Iraqi Kurdish man – known as Mullah Krekar, but named Najumuddin Faraj Ahmad – was arrested in July 2019 after he was convicted in his absence by an Italian court and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

The Italian court found him guilty of having led a now dismantled jihadist network, Rawti Shax, a Kurdish movement with alleged links to the Islamic State group and which is suspected of planning attacks in the West.

Krekar arrived in Norway in 1991 as a refugee.

The Norwegian judiciary, including the Supreme Court, has authorised the extradition, requested by the Italian authorities in July 2019, three times and the Norwegian justice ministry on Wednesday gave final authorisation to move forward.

“The ministry considers that the conditions for an extradition to Italy are met,” Minister of Justice Monica Mæland said at a brief press conference.

Krekar now has three weeks to file an appeal to the country's King in Council, a special cabinet meeting on matters of importance where the King attends.

“There will be an appeal. I am already working on it,” Brynjar Meling, Krekar's lawyer, told AFP.

“This is a sad day for the rule of law in Norway and for justice minister Monica Mæland. It is obviously a wrong decision,” he added.

According to Meling, who is also considering taking the case to the European Court of Human Rights, there is no evidence indicating that his client was guilty.

Extraditing Krekar would remove a thorn in Norway's side, after Olso tried to deport him since 2003, believing him to be a threat to national security.

Krekar, who founded the radical Islamist group Ansar al-Islam, is designated a terrorist by the UN and the US and has spent several years in Norwegian prisons for issuing threats and calling for murder.

READ ALSO: Norway frees radical Islamist after Italy ends 2016 extradition bid

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FAR-RIGHT

German far-right scene grows as ‘extremists infiltrate lockdown protests’

Germany's far-right has grown more radical and violent during the Covid-19 pandemic, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said Tuesday, presenting a report on threats to the country's democratic order.

Published: 15 June 2021 14:39 CEST
German far-right scene grows as 'extremists infiltrate lockdown protests'
A Reichsbürger demonstration in Potsdam in November 2020. credit: dpa | Christophe Gateau

Calling right-wing extremism a “major problem”, Seehofer told reporters that the scene had often hijacked more moderate protests against government measures to combat the coronavirus.

“We have to be particularly concerned about the fact that the mainstream demonstrators didn’t draw a line between themselves and the far-right ones,” he said.

The 2020 report from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the domestic security watchdog, found a 3.8-percent increase in the number of people considered right-wing extremists last year, to around 33,300 people.

About 40 percent of those people – 13,300 – were considered “violent, prepared to use violence or violence-supporting”.

Seehofer noted that although rallies organised by the far right were often called off by the authorities, its supporters infiltrated demonstrations that were permitted to take place.

Crimes linked to right-wing extremism rose five percent last year to more than 22,000, the deadliest of which was a racist mass shooting in the western city of Hanau that left nine people dead.

For the first time, the annual report included a section on the so-called New Right, describing extremists trying to influence mainstream discourse with “pseudo-intellectual” arguments intended to incite racial hatred and explode taboos.

Seehofer has repeatedly described right-wing extremism as the biggest threat to German security and banned several groups with ties to the scene.

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A particular focus has been the around 1,000 so-called Reichsbuerger (Citizens of the Reich), who reject Germany’s democratic institutions.

The report also highlighted recurring problems of right-wing extremism among police and the military.

Last week the state of Hesse said it was dissolving Frankfurt’s elite police force after several officers were accused of participating in far-right online chats and swapping neo-Nazi symbols.

Violence by the far left, with attacks against security forces, neo-Nazis and companies, particularly property managers amid anger over rising rents, saw a significant increase as well, to 1,237 cases last year, up from 921 in 2019.   

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