Norwegian Jihad - Mullah Krekar

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Broadcast: 13/11/2007
Reporter: Mark Corcoran

LEAD STORY
SERIES 17
EPISODE 20
Synopsis

Alleged Iraqi terrorist Mullah Krekar faces almost certain execution if deported to Iraq from his safe haven in Oslo, but he’s beaten all attempts by Norway to imprison or deport him and also foiled a CIA kidnap attempt.

Mullah Krekar, created the radical islamic guerrilla force, Ansar al Islam, now known as Ansar Al Sunna. It’s affiliated to Al Qaeda.

Now confident of his position in Norway, Krekar makes extraordinary admissions. He admits training a unit of suicide bombers who have since slaughtered hundreds of men, women and children.
“There’s no different between suicide bombs and using Kalashnikov – what’s the difference when you send the fighters to death”, Krekar tells Foreign Correspondent’s Mark Corcoran.

He explains how, through the internet, he calls on supporters to kill Australian and American troops in Iraq:

“It is allowed for me in Islam to kill him, to kill his translator, to kill the people which give him food and water, give him medicine – all of them”.
Krekar claims to have relinquished control of Ansar al Islam in 2002, months before the suicide bombing in which the Australian cameraman Paul Moran and five Kurdish soldiers were killed.

Even so, he knows intimate details of the attack, including what the Saudi suicide bomber did in his last minutes alive.

Krekar is entirely unrepentant about the killing . Asked what he would say to the widow of Mr Moran and his family Krekar said, “ I say to all the western women don’t send your sons to kill us.”

Corcoran: “ He wasn’t killing anybody, he was a cameraman!’
Krekar: “Yes. He was also with our enemy. “


Krekar says Moran and correspondent Eric Campbell, who was injured in the attack, were in the “wrong work at the wrong time.”
After arriving in Norway as a refugee in 1991, Krekar began commuting back to Iraq to create the feared terrorist group Ansar al Islam. His goal was the establishment of a Taliban-style Islamic state in northern Iraq.

The Norwegian Government says Krekar has breached asylum conditions, is a threat to national security and want him out of the country. But after six years of court cases, Krekar isn’t going anywhere. Norwegian law prohibits deportation to countries that have the death penalty or engage in torture.
The United States Treasury department maintains that Krekar, despite his denials, stills commands fighters in Iraq. It describes him as an Al Qaeda facilitator who covertly funds Ansar operations through a European network.