Posted on 11/15/2015 9:57:57 PM PST by GonzoII
World
12/11/2015
BARCELONA, Spain - Radical Kurdish cleric "Mullah Krekar" and 14 other Iraqi Kurds were arrested across Europe on Thursday in a coordinated police swoop on Islamist militants planning attacks, Italian media reported.
The Corriere della Sera newspaper said the suspects were arrested in countries across Europe in collaboration with police from Italy, the UK, Norway, Finland, Germany and Switzerland. A non-Kurd, a man from Kosovo, was also arrested.
Among the suspects picked up for links to the Islamic State group (ISIS), seven were arrested in Italy, four in Britain, three in Norway and one in Finland.
Media reports said the network was masterminded by Faraj Ahmad Najmuddin, known as Mullah Krekar, who was arrested in Norway on Wednesday night. The group was planning attacks in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, reports said.
"The investigation started when this military group was still in Iraqi Kurdistan and had suffered a defeat between 2011 and 2012," the newspaper quoted national prosecutor Franco Roberti as saying.
"From the destruction of this group another new military formation was born - very dangerous - that is now affiliated with ISIS, he added.
Reports quoted sources as saying the group was also planning attacks against Norwegian and British diplomats in the Middle East. It also recruited people in Europe to join ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
Krekar was the founder in 2001 of Ansar al-Islam, a terrorist Kurdish Sunni group with the aim of creating an Islamic state in Kurdistan.
He was released from prison in Norway at the end of January after a two-year sentence for threats against Prime Minister Erna Solberg, before she came to office, and three Kurds.
Only ISIS can "fulfill our ambitions and dreams," he said soon after coming out of jail.
"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 this year.
The 58-year-old preacher added that all Muslims calling for resistance to the extremist Sunni ISIS "Caliphate" are "cowards," and accused them of following orders from the United States and Shiite Iran.
He called upon ISIS to appoint someone "with the courage to fight the infidels and truly lead."
Krekar has faced multiple legal charges in Norway, where he has lived with his family since 1991.
A Norwegian newspaper reported earlier this year that Norway was considering Krekar's extradition to Italy, where authorities may want to question him about allegedly running a network to recruit jihadists in several European countries.
Krekar is wanted in the Kurdistan Region on terrorism charges dating back to the late 1990s and early 2000, when he admits to founding the al-Qaeda affiliate, Ansar al- Islam.
He declared a caliphate-like colony in the southern Kurdish towns of Biara and Tawela in the run up to the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
The US air force demolished Ansar al-Islam strongholds after the Iraq invasion and dismantled the group's network.
Kurdish authorities say Ansar al-Islam was responsible for killing and torturing numbers of locals in the area who resisted the caliphate and want to try Krekar for the atrocities.
I wonder why Norway did not turn this guy over to Kurdistan so he could face terrorism charges? Anybody got an idea besides Norway is dumb as shit?
This is simply too bizarre to believe. The Kurds have been ISIS’s most powerful ground enemies to date and have never before conducted terrorist activities against the West, not to mention they would have everything to lose and nothing to gain by alienating the West.
I think you may have misread the story. The Kurds wanted this guy.
Execute them.
That would mean we also MISREAD the HEADLINE of the article.
It says 15 Islamist KURDS arrested, does it not ?
Drop them off in Kurdistan. Open the airplane door and push Em out.
Norway doesn’t extradite in cases where the prisoner faces the death penalty.
Go figure.
Because there is no nation of Kurdistan and therefore no extradition process?
Yes, it does but I wonder if the writer is being funny trying to muddy the issue.If these animals were sent by their gubmint then it was the dumbest move I have ever heard of.
Wow, Thanks
So there is no one in charge in Kurdistan?I’m not being flip so if there is no one to turn them over to?
The Kurds are hit or miss, they can’t be trusted as they are mooslims. When push comes to shove they will side with their satanic master. They just have a tribal, nationalist streak. They were henchmen for the ottoman empire’s goal to obliterate Christians.
I am saying there is no sovereign nation of Kurdistan. There are Kurdish areas of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey, which are sovereign nations, but no sovereign Kurdistan.
I understand.Thanks.
The Kurds, like Americans with our Democrats, Libertarians, GOPe and Tea Party, Catholics, Protestants, etc, have factions- while they share a rough ethnicity, they are not all of the same faith, nor the same politics. Some, such as those allied with the U.S. [and mostly betrayed by Obama], want a free Kurdish republic or at least a semi-independent Kurdish province in northern Iraq; others, such as the ones that annoyed the Turks, Iran, and Saddam for ages, want a communist Kurdish state and hate everyone else; but there was also a faction of Kurds loyal to Saddam because they are Baathist [national socialists] and at some point held positions of status in the regime - in the regime’s intel services, for example, and a faction loyal to Krekar who they see as a religious leader.
Now, Krekar claimed to oppose Saddam Hussein but this was more of an act as his group “Ansar” was found to include some of the regime’s intel officers when pro-western Kurds captured and identified them. One was Abu Wael, an older veteran of Saddam’s IIS, but there were others. Saddam helped to arm and fund the group “Ansar” in order to use the group to go in under the no-fly zone in Iraq and assassinate pro-western Kurdish leaders in months before 9/11 because he feared, rightly, that with sanctions failing, the US would coordinate with the pro-western Kurds to topple him. [Similarly, alQaeda assassinated Afghan leader Massood a couple of days before 9/11 to deny the US an ally in toppling the Taliban.]
Krekar’s group merged into Zarqawi’s al Tawhid al Jihaad in 2002 and then after the US captured Saddam, they merged with the remnants of Iraq’s intel services under the command of Iraqi general al Dhouri [who luckily for them had much of the regime’s wealth and key personnel stashed in Syria- also a Baathist state like Iraq used to be.] This new combination of groups become al Qaeda in Iraq when Zarqawi finally openly swore allegiance to bin Laden, and eventually ISIS, with a few other name changes here and there. After Saddam’s execution al Dhouri swore allegiance to Zarqawi. Eventually Zarqawi was killed and the group fell under the command of someone called by the generic alias “al-Baghdadi” but he may be a figurehead for others unknown or for al Dhouri or his ilk.
The faction aligned with the US has been steadfast since Nixon was President. This faction is as good as gold , holds freedom of speech and religion in high esteem and socialism in low esteem, and in spite of intervals where the winds of US politics has made the US an inconsistent ally, they have remained true.
Just to make things more interesting... Mullah Krekar attempted to establish Ansar al Islam in the U.S. with the help of a guy in Syracuse who was, if I remember right, an official with the muslim charity ISNA.
Wasn’t ISNA represented by a speaker at Obama’s inaugeration ?
There was an Imam in Albany NY who was helping Krekar to establish a group in the US...
Here’s an interesting story about the Albany cell and Krekar’s group Ansar al Islam... they’ve been recruiting Americans for a very long time, mucking about between Iraq, Syria , the US & Afghanistan since the 90s.
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