The toman diaries

Krekar again..

onsdag, juni 16, 2004

Mullah Krekar's case in Norway was tossed out of court because of lacking evidence yesterday. The same day, the US said they were still convinced that Krekar was a terrorist threat. Interestingly, the judge said "it didn't make the case much easier" that one of the key witnesses which had 'evidence' against Krekar, had been tortured by PUK (one of the Northern Iraqi groups) while he was being questioned there by the US. Afterwards, he was taken to Abu Ghraib where he made his testimony to Norwegian police. Initially, he was very critical of Ansar Al Islam (Krekars group), but toned this dows as time went by. Norwegian police stopped this investigation once they learned about the torture, they didn't want to put their witnesses' safety on the line.

Suddenly out of the blue today,Krekar was sentenced to 15 years in prison in Jordan, this time for plotting terrorist acts and for having connections to Al-Quaeda. Notably, 7 others were sentenced in the same court at the same time, to the exact same punishment. The only person present got his sentence halved immediately to 7,5 years. Another 6 people were also on trial, but they have all died "in unknown locations under unknown conditions". This time it wasn't Krekar who was the leader of the group... Jordan has earlier failed in getting him extradited from Norway for drug smuggeling.

Norwegian police and the Justice department says they haven't heard a word from Jordan about the case until it came through in the press. (And nothing from them afterwards either).

American pressure or new evidence? - Neither Krekar or his lawyer has so much as heard about the case, nor has he been presented with his charge. Krekars lawyer says he isn't even hinting that the US is behind this, he says he is saying it is. No lawyer appointed, no time to present his version of the case, no nothing. Just: "You are sentenced".

So why 15 years? You see, Norway has this law that says it cant extradite someone to a country if there are even remote chances they will be sentenced to death. They need assurances of the opposite. That was presumably one of the reasons why he wasn't last time. (Along with missing evidence of course). Someone has probably been thinking a bit more this time around and thought that if they got him judged for anything less than death, he would be extradited. Many right-wing politicians in Norway still think he should be extradited, including a key figure Erna Solberg from Høyre (Right party) which is currently in position.

I wonder if Bush can use this in his champaign: "Ya seer, thees teerrrorist was seenteenced in Joordan for haaviing cloosee tiies to Osama, aaand he haaad cloosee tiieess with Saaadam as weell. Seee huw riight we weeree?"

Oops, where did lady Justice go?