Police have issued an international warrant for a 33-year-old Iraqi citizen who fled Norway after being questioned for a series of rapes between 2007 and 2010. They believe he traveled back to Iraq, but Norway has no extradition treaty with the country.
Newspaper VG reported this week that the man is charged with six rapes and attempted rapes, three of them in the area around Oslo’s City Court House (Tinghuset) downtown. The rapes are not part of the wave of rapes plaguing the Norwegian capital this year, but figured prominently among rape cases last year and in 2007.
It was only after police detectives found a fingerprint in one of the cases from 2010, from which they could obtain DNA, that they finally could track him down. VG reported that DNA had also been found in three cases from 2007 but police had no matches for it at the time. The Iraqi man was called in as a suspect in 2010, police took a DNA sample from him and not only did it match the fingerprint but also the DNA from 2007.
He’d been released, however, pending DNA test results, and he fled the country. Now police are working to get him back, with an Interpol warrant out for his arrest. VG reported that his defense attorney has been in touch with him, says he denies guilt and is willing to stand trial in Norway, but no longer has a passport and thus allegedly lacks travel documents.
Views and News staff
