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Mullah Krekar: The CIA and the militant
who eluded it
4.12.2006
By Craig Whitlock |
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Cat-and-mouse chase in Norway indicative of lacking
counterterror tactics
December 4, 2006
OSLO - Two months after he helped kidnap a
Muslim cleric in Italy, records show, an undercover
CIA officer boarded a flight to Norway on another
secret mission. Two other U.S. spies followed a few
weeks later and checked into the same hotel.
Shortly after the agents arrived in the spring of
2003, an Islamic militant living in Oslo known as
Mullah Krekar received a warning from an anonymous
Norwegian official, according to Krekar's lawyer.
The message: Krekar, then head of a Kurdish
insurgent group, was a CIA target and should watch
his back.
The spies left Norway by the end of the summer,
according to records of their travels compiled by
European
investigators. If the CIA was planning to abduct
Krekar, like other Islamic radicals it had secretly
apprehended in Europe after the attacks of Sept. 11,
2001, those plans were quietly abandoned.
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Mullah Krekar, the founder of radical and Terrorist
Islamist group Ansar al-Islam. Krekar, whose real
name is Fateh Najmeddin Faraj
Photo: AP |
But it would not be the first or last time that the
U.S. government had sought to push Krekar (whose
real name is Fateh Najmeddin Faraj) out of Norway.
For more than a decade, the Kurdish cleric had
enjoyed protection in the Nordic country as a
political refugee, even as he frequently slipped
back into his homeland in northern Iraq to lead an
armed separatist movement called Ansar al-Islam,
which has carried out attacks on civilians and U.S.
troops.
The case shows how the United States has struggled
to deal with Islamic militants who are allowed to
live freely in Europe despite being labeled serious
security risks. Others have included radical clerics
in London and supporters of the Hamburg cell
responsible for the Sept. 11 hijackings.
But the pursuit of Krekar also demonstrates how U.S.
tactics in confronting those militants have
sometimes backfired, giving ammunition to critics
who accuse the Bush administration of skirting the
law or relying on questionable evidence.
Before the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. government
publicly portrayed Krekar and his network as an
organizational link between al-Qaida and the
government of Saddam Hussein. Under pressure to
prove that connection, the United States tried a
variety of tactics to forcibly remove Krekar from
Norway and hand him over to friendly security
services in the Middle East.
Each attempt failed. Today, although the Norwegian
government has declared Krekar a security threat and
ordered him deported, the mullah is still in Oslo.
Most evidence against him remains classified. But
other charges have been refuted in court or publicly
discredited, including allegations by U.S. and Iraqi
officials that Krekar ordered followers to carry out
suicide bombings and that Ansar controlled a
chemical weapons factory.
Americans 'wanted to use me'
"At first, I didn't think I had done anything that
was a threat to the Americans," Krekar said in an
interview. "Later, some people told me I had become
a target, but I didn't think the Americans would
come for me themselves. They wanted to use me, to
show that there was a link between Saddam and al-Qaida."
The intense U.S. interest in Krekar came at a time
when the CIA was targeting other Islamic radicals in
Europe for "extraordinary rendition," the
clandestine practice of seizing terrorism suspects
and transferring them to allied nations that
sometimes practice torture. Among suspects grabbed
by the CIA: a Muslim cleric in Milan, two Arabs
living in Stockholm and two others from Germany.
The CIA and the U.S. Embassy in Norway declined to
comment on whether Krekar was a rendition target. In
a prepared statement for this article, State
Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said, "The
United States continues to consider Krekar to be a
threat to national security, and we think the same
with respect to Ansar al-Islam."
U.S. officials have made no secret of their desire
to see Krekar booted from his Scandinavian haven. As
secretary of state, Colin L. Powell repeatedly urged
his Norwegian counterparts to expel Krekar, singling
out Ansar al-Islam as proof of a connection between
the Iraqi government and al-Qaida in a February 2003
speech to the United Nations.
In August 2003, a few weeks after the CIA operatives
left Oslo, Attorney General John Ashcroft made his
own trip to this nation of 4.6 million people to
ratchet up the pressure. He called Ansar "a very
dangerous group," whose leaders "merit the very
close attention of those who are fighting
terrorism."
A celebrity in Norway
Krekar, whose real name is Najumuddin Faraj Ahmad,
is 50 years old. Fluent in four languages and
sporting a bushy black beard, he has become a
celebrity in Norway. He has published an
autobiography — "My Own Words" — and aggressively
defended his reputation, saying he quit as Ansar's
leader in 2002.
Even as he denies involvement in terrorism, he has
praised those who practice it. In an interview with
a Kurdish newspaper in June 2006, he called al-Qaida's
founder, Osama bin Laden, "a good Muslim" and wished
him a long life. He also lamented the "bad news"
about the recent death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
chief of al-Qaida forces in Iraq. "But I am not sad,
because he went to paradise," Krekar added.
Krekar has also been questioned by European
counterterrorism investigators about his alleged
ties to radicals in Germany, Sweden, Italy and
Spain, though none of those countries has filed
charges against him.
"Everyone — the Americans, the Islamists, the
Norwegian government — has built up Mullah Krekar
into someone bigger than he is, into a symbol," said
Brynjar Meling, one of his Norwegian attorneys. "And
he has let them do this."
Krekar hasn't always been an enemy of the United
States. He fled northern Iraq in 1990 and received
asylum in Norway after claiming he had been
persecuted by Saddam Hussein's security services.
After the Persian Gulf War of 1991, he returned for
long visits to his Kurdish homeland, which was under
the protection of U.S. warplanes maintaining a
"no-fly" zone. In early 2001, he said, he and other
Kurdish leaders met with three CIA officers to
discuss how to overthrow Hussein.
Suspected of harboring terrorists
Later that year, Krekar founded Ansar al-Islam, or
Followers of Islam. The network carved out a small
territory near the Iranian border and engaged in
skirmishes with other Kurdish factions. U.S.
counterterrorism officials suspected that Ansar
sheltered al-Qaida fugitives who had fled
Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion there in 2001.
In September 2002, after crossing the mountainous
border with Iran, Krekar was detained by Iranian
authorities and put on a flight to Amsterdam. Upon
landing, he was arrested again, this time by Dutch
authorities, who said he was wanted for extradition
to Jordan on drug charges.
Krekar said that the allegations were trumped up and
that he had never been to Jordan. His attorneys said
U.S. officials had orchestrated the detention.
Dutch officials confirmed U.S. involvement in the
case but didn't elaborate. "You can assume the
Americans have an interest," Dutch Justice Ministry
spokesman Martin Bruinsma told reporters.
While he was held in Amsterdam, Krekar said, he was
questioned by FBI agents on two occasions, even
though he wasn't wanted on U.S. charges. "They
wanted to talk about al-Qaida," he recalled. "I
didn't answer anything. I said, 'Just ask about me
and my group.' "
Krekar was released in January 2003 after Jordan
failed to provide detailed evidence against him. He
flew to Oslo, where authorities weren't eager to let
him return but didn't have a legal basis for
refusing him entry.
In U.S. spies' sights
Three months later, on April 24, a CIA officer
arrived in Oslo on an SAS flight from New York. He
checked into the Radisson SAS Plaza Hotel in Oslo, a
few blocks from Krekar's apartment, and registered
as an employee of a fictitious technology firm in
Hyattsville, Md.
The same CIA officer, using a false cover name, had
been present in Milan two months earlier for the
abduction of a radical Muslim cleric, Hassan Mustafa
Osama Nasr, according to Italian prosecutors.
Nasr was taken to Egypt, where he says he was
tortured. Italian authorities have filed kidnapping
charges against 25 CIA operatives, including the
officer who later flew to Norway. None has been
arrested.
The spies' European travels were reconstructed by
Italian investigators who traced their
frequent-flier and credit-card account records. The
existence of the records was first reported by
Stavanger Aftenblad, a Norwegian newspaper.
Four days after the CIA officer arrived in Oslo,
Krekar's attorney, Meling, said he received a
warning about his client from a Norwegian government
source, via an intermediary. Although the message
was vague, it made clear that U.S. spies had Krekar
in their sights. In response, the lawyer wrote a
letter to Norwegian police, requesting extra
protection for Krekar.
The CIA operative left Norway on May 18. But two
weeks later, he was replaced by a female U.S. spy —
also charged in the Italian kidnapping case — who
flew to Oslo from Chicago.
She was joined a month later by another female
agent, according to Stavanger Aftenblad. Both women
registered under fictitious names and businesses and
rented a car for a month, the newspaper reported.
Both left the country by summer's end.
Rumors about the spies
What else the spies did in Norway is unknown. But at
the time of their visit, their cover was jeopardized
as rumors swirled about their presence in Oslo.
In May 2003, local news media reported that the
Norwegian government had approved plans for
undercover U.S. agents to come to Norway to
investigate Islamic radicals, including Krekar.
Norwegian officials would not confirm or deny the
reports but said foreign intelligence agents would
not be allowed to operate in the country
independently.
Meanwhile, Norwegian authorities, with the aid of
intelligence provided by U.S. officials, tried to
deal with Krekar in other ways.
The cleric was arrested on the eve of the invasion
of Iraq in March 2003 but released a few weeks later
for lack of evidence. Later that year, Norwegian
prosecutors opened another investigation, this time
focusing on allegations that Krekar had ordered
Ansar recruits to stage suicide bombings in Iraq.
The case hinged on a key witness: a would-be suicide
bomber who was captured in Iraq and handed over to
U.S. forces. The failed bomber told Iraqi officials
that Krekar was behind the plot. When he was
interviewed by Norwegian investigators in Baghdad,
however, the man recanted, saying he had been
tortured until he agreed to testify against Krekar.
Deportation order didn't work
Norwegian immigration officials have tried for years
to kick Krekar out of the country. Citing classified
evidence, the government first declared Krekar a
threat to national security in 2003 and ordered him
deported.
He has appealed to the courts, where he has lost
repeatedly. On Nov. 22, an appellate court upheld
the government's decision, declaring, "Reasons exist
to fear that the plaintiff has links with terrorist
activities and groups."
But chances are remote he'll have to leave Oslo
anytime soon.
Under Norwegian law, no one can be deported to a
country where he or she could face torture or the
death penalty. Judges in Norway have ruled that Iraq
is such a place and will probably remain that way
for years.
"I think Mullah Krekar can get a mortgage and
prepare for a long and secure stay in Norway," Arvid
Sjoedin, another of his attorneys, said last month.
washintonpost com
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