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German police grill Krekar in Oslo court

The Local Norway
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German police grill Krekar in Oslo court
Mullah Krekar as he was sentenced to five years in prison in 2012. Photo: Håkon Mosvsvold Larsen / Scanpix

Norway-based Islamic militant Mullah Krekar was questioned by German police on Monday over his role in forming an international terrorist network, Norway's TV2 channel has reported.

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According to the channel, Krekar was grilled in a special 'terrorist court' built in the Oslo district court for the trial of far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik. 
 
German police have already charged ten people in the case, which centres around an extremist off-shoot of Krekar's Ansar al-Islam group, whose internet chats were intercepted, the channel reports. 
 
According to Krekar's lawyer, Brynjar Meling, his client fears that Norwegian authorities want to extradite him to Germany, thereby ridding themselves of him. 
 
Krekar, whose real name is Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad, was sentenced to five years in prison on March 26th 2012 for making repeated death threats against Norwegian politicians. 
 
His wife and children all have Norwegian citizenship, but Krekar himself does not. 
 
The Kurdish Regional Administration, which runs the city of Sulaymaniyah where Krekar was born, has repeatedly called for Norway to extradite him so that he can face terror charges. 
 
But as courts in the area still give death sentences for terror crimes, he cannot be extradited under Norwegian law.  
 
Ansar al-Islam detonated a suicide car bomb on March 22nd 2003, killing Australian journalist Paul Moran and several others. 
 
The group is also thought to have been responsible for a September 9th 2003 attempted bombing of a United States Department of Defence office in Arbil, which killed three people.

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