Mullah Krekar
Najmadin Faraj Ahmad, better known as Mullah Krekar, is an Iraqi Kurdish Sunni Islamic scholar and militant leader. He was a commander for the Peshmerga unit belonging to the Kurdistan Islamic Movement during the 1991 Iraqi uprisings. Later, he founded Ansar al-Islam in 2001, and left for Norway in 2003, where he founded Rawti Shax. He was arrested and is currently serving a prison sentence in Italy, after having been extradited from Norway in 2020. He came to Norway as a refugee from Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991. His wife, Rukhosh Ahmad, and his four children have Norwegian citizenship, but not Krekar himself. He speaks Kurdish, Arabic, Persian, Norwegian and English. He had no relation to Jama'at Ansar al-Islam, which emerged long after Ansar al-Islam disbanded.
Krekar was the original leader of the Islamist armed group Ansar al-Islam, which was set up and commenced operations in Northern Iraq while he had refugee status in Norway. Krekar claims, however, not to have had foreknowledge of the various terrorist attacks performed by the group he was leading. Since February 2003 he has an expulsion order against him, which is suspended pending Iraqi government guarantees that he will not face torture or execution. Norway is committed to international treaties which prohibit the expulsion of an individual without such a guarantee.
Kurdish authorities in the Kurdistan Regional Government have repeatedly asked for Mullah Krekar to be extradited from Norway. The death penalty remains on the books in the Kurdistan region. Most death sentences have been changed into life sentences since the Kurdish authorities took power in 1992, the exception being that eleven alleged members of Ansar al-Islam were hanged in the regional capital of Erbil in October 2006. He has as of 8 December 2006 been on the UN terror list, and as of 8 November 2007 been judged by the Supreme Court of Norway as a "danger to national security".
On March 26, 2012, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison for making repeated death threats against Norwegian politicians and the Kurds if they pursued certain civil actions against him. He has appealed this prison sentence. The next day, March 27, 2012, he was arrested by the Norwegian Police Security Service and Norwegian Police and taken into protective custody and incarceration. This occurred after certain additional statements of a threatening nature were linked to him, suggesting that others might take retaliatory actions against Norwegians if his civil prison sentence were implemented.
In 2020, he was extradited to Italy. In 2022, his 12-year prison sentence was upheld when the Italian Supreme Court rejected his appeal.
Early life
Mullah Krekar joined the KDP branch of the Peshmerga in 1974. He claimed that the Kurdish resistance movement in Iraq collapsed due to the "American conspiracy" that forced Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to close Iranian borders to the Iraqi Kurds in 1975 and sign an agreement with Saddam Hussein in Algeria. He became religious during his stay in Erbil in 1975. He lived in Iran from 1982 to 1984. After failing sociology at the University of Tehran, he worked as an imam. He studied forensic sciences among Sunni scholars, and moved to Pakistan in 1985 to study. While in Iran, Mullah Krekar worked with a number of Kurds in Tehran to establish a jihadist organization against the regime of Saddam Hussein. He blamed the failure of the project on the Iranian government. He settled in Karachi, where he studied until the Halabja massacre, which led him to quit his studies and work as a relief volunteer at camps in Iran and Turkey. Krekar claimed that Taliban-affiliated jihadists in Peshawar raised over a hundred thousand dollars for those affected.He returned to Iraqi Kurdistan during the 1991 Iraqi uprisings and joined the Kurdistan Islamic Movement led by Osman Abdulaziz. He became the military commander of the Kurdistan Islamic Movement until 2001 when he left it to form the Islah group, later merging with Jund al-Islam to form Ansar al-Islam. He also seized control of the Islamic Emirate of Kurdistan from the Kurdish Islamic Movement.
Krekar in Norway
Proceedings against Krekar
Krekar was born to a religious Sunni Kurdish family in the city of Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq. In August 2002, while Krekar was in Iraq, the Norwegian government revoked his refugee status on the grounds that he had traveled back to his homeland and spent long periods there.Krekar was arrested in the Netherlands at Schiphol Airport near Amsterdam in September 2002, after Iran denied him entry and sent him back to Europe. He was interviewed by FBI agents ; no extradition request was made. He was deported to Norway in January 2003.
In February 2003 the Norwegian government ordered Krekar to be deported to Iraq, but as of July 2009 the order had not been implemented because of the security environment in Iraq, and the risk that Krekar could face the death penalty there, as Norway will not deport people in these circumstances. Krekar has unsuccessfully challenged the expulsion order in court, with the order being confirmed in September 2005. Norway's government has said that the new government to be elected in Iraq in December 2005 might permit discussion on whether Krekar's expulsion order can be implemented.
On March 21, 2003 his arrest was ordered by Økokrim, the Norwegian law enforcement agency for financial crime, to ensure he did not leave the country while accusations that he had financed terrorist attacks using Norway as a base were investigated. Court proceedings against Krekar were however dropped when it proved impossible to prove his connections with the terrorist attacks staged in Iraq by Ansar al-Islam during his leadership. His term as leader ended.
The United States government has declared Ansar al-Islam a terrorist group, but Krekar denies that it was during the time he headed it, and says he no longer does. While Krekar has not been found guilty of anything, a number of his opinions have met little sympathy; he was once recorded claiming that Osama bin Laden is the "jewel in the crown of Islam". and that he was proud of what Abu Musab al-Zarqawi "has done and that he has become a martyr".
In September 2005 the Iraqi Justice Minister Abdel Hussein Shandal said that Krekar was wanted in Iraq and should be tried there.
About the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, he said to the Norwegian media "This is a declaration of war against of our religion, our faith, and our civilization. We Muslims are ready for this."
Krekar told the Kurdish magazine Awene that he wants to return to Iraq to fight openly against the Iraqi government and the coalition, but that he lacked travel documents from the Norwegian government. He confirmed to a Norwegian newspaper that he had been correctly quoted. The Norwegian minister of labour and migration, Bjarne Håkon Hanssen, responded that Krekar could leave at any time and that he would be given "travel documents within the day. He'll also get money for airline tickets, taxi cab, and the whole deal. If he really wants to go, that is."
On December 7, 2006, the United States Department of the Treasury designated Mullah Krekar as one of five individuals providing financial support to terrorist organizations. In a statement he is accused of providing funds for Ansar al-Sunnah, an active Iraqi terror-organization descended from Ansar al-Islam. The press release states that "This designation freezes any assets the designees may have under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibits all financial and commercial transactions by any U.S. person with the designees". Mullah Krekar was later that day added to the United Nations Security Council list of individuals belonging to or associated with the Al-Qaeda organization. All member states of the United Nations are obliged to freeze assets and prevent entry or transit through their territories with regard to the individuals included on the list. Anders Romarheim, a researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, believes that the placement of Mullah Krekar on this list is a United States strategy to put pressure on Norway.
On November 8, 2007, the Supreme Court of Norway ruled that Krekar is a threat to Norway's national security, thus upholding the February 2003 decision by the government to deport him to Iraq. It is still unclear when Krekar will be deported due to Iraq's death penalty laws. Some politicians asked for Krekar to be put in jail until he is deported.
Threat against Mariwan Halabjaee
In an audio file published on the Kurdish website Renesans.nu during September 2008, Krekar allegedly threatened to kill Mariwan Halabjaee, the Iraqi Kurdish author of Sex, Sharia and Women in the History of Islam, who also resided in Norway. "I swear that we will not live if you live. Either you go before us, or we go before you," said Krekar. Krekar compared Halabjaee with Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.In February 2012, Krekar confirmed in the Oslo District Court that he had issued a twenty-page fatwa against Halabjaee. The fatwa was sent to several hundred Islamic scholars around the world. While Krekar said he thought he might be able to "guarantee the safety" of Halabjaee, Krekar confirmed that his fatwa "implies" that it is "permissible" to kill Halabjaee in Oslo or anywhere else. Krekar compared Halabjaee to Theo van Gogh, the film director who was killed by an Islamist in the Netherlands in 2004.
Terrorism charges against Krekar
On July 12, 2011, terrorism charges were filed against Krekar for a death threat he uttered against ex-minister Erna Solberg during a news conference in June 2010.Allegations of a U.S. plan to seize Krekar
In 2003, agents for the CIA, including Cynthia Dame Logan and Gregory Asherleighs, were sent to Norway.They arrived directly after the abduction of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr from Milan, Italy. A few days before their arrival, Mullah Krekar's lawyer, Brynjar Meling, asked for police protection of Krekar. The Norwegian Intelligence Service admits it had knowledge of the agents' visit to Norway, and Meling confirms he had heard rumours that Krekar was to be kidnapped and transferred to Guantanamo Bay. If the operation was not approved beforehand by Norway it would have been a violation of Norwegian law. Mullah Krekar was not kidnapped. According to an article in Newsweek, a Pentagon official proposed inserting a US Navy SEAL team to engage in a "snatch rope" operation against Krekar; however, the plan was allegedly rejected because a shooting confrontation between the SEALs and Norwegian police would have triggered a diplomatic disaster between Norway and the United States.
However, a week later the Los Angeles Times quoted a high ranking intelligence official who claimed that U.S. special forces were in fact inserted in a European country allied with the United States through NATO, in order to carry out a snatch operation under strikingly similar circumstances to the Krekar case. The revelation led to suspicion that the plan was in fact not cancelled, as the Pentagon had stated. According to the Norwegian newspaper Stavanger Aftenblad, which was the original source of the CIA agents' mission in Oslo, the U.S. special forces, most likely Navy SEALs, had been monitoring a "militant leader" over a period of time, and were in place ready to carry out the snatch. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Pentagon kept the allied country's government in the dark about the mission, which apparently failed or was aborted.