Investigations into several suicide bombings in Iraq now centre on a man held in detention in Norway.
Mullah Krekar, founder of the radical Kurdish Islamist group Ansar-al-Islam was ordered held in custody by an appeals court in Oslo last week.
The refugee-turned-guerrilla leader from Jordan will remain behind bars another four weeks pending further investigation. Krekar has been detained over investigations into suicide bombings in Northern Iraq and the murder of a rival Kurdish leader in the spring of 2002.
Krekar was arrested in Norway Jan. 2. A court in Oslo ruled three days later there was not enough evidence to keep him in jail. But he has been kept in custody following an order from an appeals court.
The appeals court ruled that it was probable that Krekar “has had and still has a central position in Ansar-al-Islam” and that he “still wields considerable influence on the activity of the organisation.”
Police investigators are connecting the mullah to suicide bombers after tracing his activity on the Internet. The police say emails he sent contained coded messages to terror groups around the world. Krekar was also said to have justified suicide bombings as a form of jihad, or holy war.
State prosecutor Erling Grimstad says preliminary charges against the mullah were filed Oct. 30 last year. But Økokrim (the white-collar crime unit) has been on Krekar’s trail since February 2003, Grimstad said.
Investigations led Grimstad and two police officers to Northern Iraq last fall. They spoke to several former Ansar-al-Islam fighters.
“We spent considerable time in the region,” Grimstad told IPS. “Several of the people questioned said that Krekar had ordered them to carry out murders and suicide attacks in the region.”
The key witnesses against Krekar are two youths who had been asked to carry out suicide bombings. The two aged 17 and 20 were caught before they could carry out an attack close to a military base belonging to the Kurdistan Workers party (PKK) in Halabja in March last year. The two confessed they were instructed by Ansar-al-Islam led at the time by Krekar, Grimstad said.
Krekar’s attorney Brynjar Meling says the PKK has influenced the investigations. He plans to challenge the appeal court’s verdict in the Supreme Court.
“The verdict in the court of appeals is based on presumptions and ignores some of my objections,” Meling told Norwegian news agency NTB. “The result is that the court came to the wrong conclusion.”
Krekar’s case is being followed closely by intelligence agencies in Europe and by the CIA. The U.S. military says Ansar-al-Islam is linked to al-Qaeda.
U.S. efforts to prove such a link are the driving force behind this case, political commentators in Norway say. “Such a link would justify the war in Iraq,” says Kjetil Stormark, journalist with the Verdens Gang newspaper.
U.S. Attorney-General John Ashcroft made an unprecedented visit to Oslo last September. He spoke then of Ansar-al-Islam as a “very dangerous group” that had set up a network of terrorist training camps in Northern Iraq.
“He was very interested in Krekar,” Norwegian foreign secretary Jan Petersen said after his meeting with Ashcroft.
Krekar’s arrest early January coincides with an effort by European intelligence agencies to locate Ansar-al-Islam terrorist cells, intelligence sources say.
Krekar has claimed that he has not led Ansar-al-Islam since May 2002. But authorities in Norway say he has continued to be active both as the spiritual and actual leader of the group, and that he has been organising suicide attacks in Northern Iraq.
Norwegian media have pointed out that Krekar had referred to himself as the leader of Ansar-al-Islam when he was interviewed on the Arabic TV channel Al-Jazeera only weeks ago.
Krekar admitted on the program that Ansar-al-Islam was behind a suicide bombing in Northern Iraq on March 22 last year. Three people were killed in the attack. Krekar’s alleged involvement is a key element in Norwegian prosecutors’ charges against him.
The 46-year-old Krekar was granted political asylum in Norway in 1991. Norwegian officials claimed in 2002 that in returning to Iraq often, Krekar had violated the terms of his asylum status.
In September 2002 the police charged him with involvement in terrorist activities. But the charge was unexpectedly dropped in June last year. In the end the police charged him only with holding racist views against the United States.
Today the bearded cleric denies any links with the group regarded as a terrorist organisation by the United States and the United Nations. He says he has been living a quiet life with his wife and children in an apartment in Oslo.
