Officials at Norway’s foreign ministry have alerted Norway’s police intelligence unit PST (Politiets sikkerhetstjeneste) to what they believe are new threats made against Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide by an Islamic extremist who was released from custody just last week for making earlier threats against others.
Eide was among several politicians and community leaders who marched in torchlight parades Sunday evening in Oslo, Drammen and Stavanger, to protest extremism. On Monday, the newly released leader of an Islamic extremist group, Ubaydullah Hussain, called Eide of the Labour Party a “terrorist” on the Facebook page of a politician for the rival Conservative Party.
“The terrorist that you stand together with here has given orders to kill Muslim women and children in both Iraq and Afghanistan,” Hussain wrote in a comment to Conservative politician Aamir Javed Sheikh. “Let Allah’s curse ram him in this world and forever after. And the fire he will meet in hell will be a million times stronger than the torch you hold in your hand.”
Sheikh told news bureau NTB that “we can’t accept this kind of threat. It’s a threat against Espen Barth Eide and against democracy. I think he (Hussain) should be reported to the police.”
Sheikh informed the ministry of what he viewed as a threat, which in turn informed PST. “It’s PST that makes evaluations of security threats,” a ministry spokeswoman told NTB.
PST, meanwhile, was the target of sharp criticism on Monday from a commission set up to study its performance. PST leaders, according to the commission, haven’t stayed updated on developments in the overall security threats facing Norway, and have been too hung up on individual cases to see the whole picture.
newsinenglish.no staff
