Iraqi Kurdish Islamic extremist leader Mullah Krekar, 2016. Photo: NTB/Scanpix
COPENHAGEN, Denmark,— The Norwegian domestic security agency says a Kurdish Muslim extremist cleric found guilty in Italy for planning terror has been detained on an Italian arrest warrant.
The PST security agency says Iraqi Kurdistan-born Mullah Krekar was detained late Monday. It was not immediately clear whether he would be extradited.
The agency tweeted hours after an Italian court found Krekar guilty of attempting to overthrow the Kurdish government in northern Iraq and create an Islamic caliphate, and sentenced him to 12 years.
Italian prosecutors had alleged Krekar, who is based in Norway, is behind Rawti Shax, a European network aimed at violently overthrowing the government in Kurdistan. Krekar plans to appeal.
Krekar, whose real name is Najmaddin Faraj Ahmad, had refused to travel to Italy, fearing he would be extradited to Iraq after the trial.
In October 2015, seventeen suspects, including Krekar, were arrested and charged with radicalization and recruitment efforts on behalf of Islamic State. The group is alleged to have planned an attack targeting Norwegian and British diplomats in the Middle East and plotted to kidnap other envoys in a bid to free their leader during his previous stints in custody.
They also are accused of recruiting at least five people in Europe who traveled to Iraq and Syria to join ISIS, authorities said.
Krekar said in 2015 only the Islamic State can “fulfill our ambitions and dreams,” . “The Islamic State is not something strange; it is the only element that can fulfill our ambitions and dreams,” he said in an Al Jazeera interview.
Krekar has immigrated to Norway in 1991 after “Islamic scholarship” and training in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 1980s. Earlier his pictures from Afghanistan has been published in many Islamic web sites and Krekar has also confirmed via his lawyer Brynjar Meling that he had meeting with Osama bin Laden already in 1988 in Peshawar in Pakistan.
Krekar, who led the Ansar al-Islam organization, al-Qaeda affiliated insurgent group, founded in 2001, as a merger of Jund al-Islam (Soldiers of Islam), and a splinter group from Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (IMK).
In 2006 the radical imam said “Osama bin Laden is a good man. I wish him a long life. He is a good Muslim and he is against the Bush administration,” Krekar, known for his controversial statements, told AFP in Oslo .
Ansar al-Islam group listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and Iraqi Kurdistan government. The group is also suspected in suicide bombings of coalition forces in Iraqi Kurdistan,
Krekar in one of the most wanted in Iraqi Kurdistan region on charges of terrorist attacks in the Kurdish region. Local officials still claim Krekar was responsible for the violence and have demanded he be extradited back to Iraqi Kurdistan.
In his capacity as leader of Ansar al-Islam, he is accused by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan PUK party of ordering the beheading of 40 Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in Kheli Hama village in September 2001.
Read more about Iraqi Kurdish Islamic radical Mullah Krekar
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