1. Najmadin Faraj Ahmad, better known as Mullah Krekar, is a Kurdish Sunni Islamic scholar.
64 Facts About Mullah Krekar
1. 2.
Mullah Krekar was a commander for the Peshmerga unit belonging to the Kurdistan Islamic Movement during the 1991 Iraqi uprisings.
3.
Mullah Krekar was arrested and is currently serving a prison sentence in Italy, after having been extradited from Norway in 2020.
4.
Mullah Krekar came to Norway as a refugee from Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991.
5.
Mullah Krekar had no relation to Jama'at Ansar al-Islam, which emerged long after Ansar al-Islam disbanded.
6.
Kurdish authorities in the Kurdistan Regional Government have repeatedly asked for Mullah Krekar to be extradited from Norway.
7.
Mullah Krekar has as of 8 December 2006 been on the UN terror list, and as of 8 November 2007 been judged by the Supreme Court of Norway as a "danger to national security".
8.
Mullah Krekar joined the KDP branch of the Peshmerga in 1974.
9.
Mullah Krekar claimed that the Kurdish resistance movement in Iraq collapsed due to the "American conspiracy" that forced Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to close Iranian borders to the Iraqi Kurds in 1975 and sign an agreement with Saddam Hussein in Algeria.
10.
Mullah Krekar became religious during his stay in Erbil in 1975.
11.
Mullah Krekar studied forensic sciences among Sunni scholars, and moved to Pakistan in 1985 to study.
12.
Mullah Krekar blamed the failure of the project on the Iranian government.
13.
Mullah Krekar settled in Karachi, where he studied until the Halabja massacre, which led him to quit his studies and work as a relief volunteer at camps in Iran and Turkey.
14.
Mullah Krekar claimed that Taliban-affiliated jihadists in Peshawar raised over a hundred thousand dollars for those affected.
15.
Mullah Krekar returned to Iraqi Kurdistan during the 1991 Iraqi uprisings and joined the Kurdistan Islamic Movement led by Osman Abdulaziz.
16.
Mullah Krekar became the military commander of the Kurdistan Islamic Movement until 2001 when he left it to form the Islah group, later merging with Jund al-Islam to form Ansar al-Islam.
17.
Mullah Krekar seized control of the Islamic Emirate of Kurdistan from the IMK.
18.
Mullah Krekar was born to a religious Sunni Kurdish family in the city of Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq.
19.
Mullah Krekar was arrested in the Netherlands at Schiphol Airport near Amsterdam in September 2002, after Iran denied him entry and sent him back to Europe.
20.
Mullah Krekar was interviewed by FBI agents ; no extradition request was made.
21.
In February 2003 the Norwegian government ordered Mullah Krekar to be deported to Iraq, but as of July 2009 the order had not been implemented because of the security environment in Iraq, and the risk that Mullah Krekar could face the death penalty there, as Norway will not deport people in these circumstances.
22.
Mullah Krekar has unsuccessfully challenged the expulsion order in court, with the order being confirmed in September 2005.
23.
Court proceedings against Mullah Krekar were however dropped when it proved impossible to prove his connections with the terrorist attacks staged in Iraq by Ansar al-Islam during his leadership.
24.
The United States government has declared Ansar al-Islam a terrorist group, but Mullah Krekar denies that it was during the time he headed it, and says he no longer does.
25.
In September 2005 the Iraqi Justice Minister Abdel Hussein Shandal said that Mullah Krekar was wanted in Iraq and should be tried there.
26.
Mullah Krekar told the Kurdish magazine Awene that he wants to return to Iraq to fight openly against the Iraqi government and the coalition, but that he lacked travel documents from the Norwegian government.
27.
Mullah Krekar confirmed to a Norwegian newspaper that he had been correctly quoted.
28.
Mullah Krekar was later that day added to the United Nations Security Council list of individuals belonging to or associated with the Al-Qaeda organization.
29.
Anders Romarheim, a researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, believes that the placement of Mullah Krekar on this list is a United States strategy to put pressure on Norway.
30.
On November 8,2007, the Supreme Court of Norway ruled that Mullah Krekar is a threat to Norway's national security, thus upholding the February 2003 decision by the government to deport him to Iraq.
31.
Some politicians asked for Mullah Krekar to be put in jail until he is deported.
32.
Mullah Krekar compared Halabjaee with Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
33.
In February 2012, Mullah Krekar confirmed in the Oslo District Court that he had issued a twenty-page fatwa against Halabjaee.
34.
Mullah Krekar compared Halabjaee to Theo van Gogh, the film director who was killed by an Islamist in the Netherlands in 2004.
35.
The Norwegian Intelligence Service admits it had knowledge of the agents' visit to Norway, and Meling confirms he had heard rumours that Mullah Krekar was to be kidnapped and transferred to Guantanamo Bay.
36.
The group had approximately 400 members when Mullah Krekar's lawyer deemed the threat "serious" and said he "hoped the police would investigate the people involved".
37.
Mullah Krekar's son-in-law was mildly injured by one of the bullets.
38.
On 26 March 2012, Mullah Krekar was sentenced to 5 years in prison for making death threats.
39.
On 26 March 2012, Mullah Krekar was re-arrested for making threats against two Kurds and the Conservative Party leader Erna Solberg.
40.
The Court of Appeal ordered that Mullah Krekar pay 130,000 kroner in damages compensation to each of the three Kurds he threatened, and to serve two years and ten months in prison, less the 255 days he was in custody.
41.
Mullah Krekar explained that since there was not yet enough Muslims in Norway to form a separate political bloc, Muslims had many strategies in common with Norwegian leftists.
42.
On 20 February 2015, it was reported that Mullah Krekar had been arrested.
43.
Mullah Krekar's statements refer to the Charlie Hebdo newspaper whose cartoonists were gunned down in Paris for allegedly drawing cartoons that Kreker refers to.
44.
In July 2019, it was reported that Mullah Krekar was arrested in Oslo.
45.
Mullah Krekar's arrest was requested by Italian authorities as they suspected that he has led Rawti Shax, an offshoot on Ansar al-Islam.
46.
Mullah Krekar has denied the charges against him, calling the case "fake".
47.
Mullah Krekar is being held at a prison in Milan.
48.
In 2019, Mullah Krekar was found to be the leader of the jihadi defence cell Rawti Shax and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
49.
On 26 March 2020, it was announced that Mullah Krekar had been extradited from Norway to Italy, where he will be sentenced to jail for leading a jihadist network.
50.
Mullah Krekar [was previously] held in the Badu 'e Carros prison in Nuoro, Sardinia.
51.
Mullah Krekar claimed that if a caliphate were to be established, Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, or Gulbuddin Hekmatyar should be leader.
52.
Azzam Tamimi, who interviewed Mullah Krekar, said that he felt Mullah Krekar was mistreated by secular Kurds in Norway.
53.
Mullah Krekar said he would support Kurdish independence "wholeheartedly" even though he has lost faith in Kurdish parties, but he "has no quarrel with any political party".
54.
Mullah Krekar stated that many of his relatives and friends are members of the KDP and the PUK, and that he had no issues with either party.
55.
Hoshyar Zebari announced that the Kurdistan Regional Government had no issues with Mullah Krekar, and did not charge him.
56.
In 2001, Mullah Krekar seized control of the unstable Islamic Emirate of Kurdistan and declared independence.
57.
Mullah Krekar claimed that the Muslim community criticized Kurds for being secular, yet failed to support Kurds who fought from a religious standpoint, such as Sheikh Said, Mahmud Barzinji, and himself.
58.
Mullah Krekar refused to work with Iraqi jihadists, as many of them were former Ba'athist officers.
59.
Mullah Krekar called on Ansar al-Islam to be lenient on captured PUK soldiers, claiming that they were still Kurds and had nothing to do with the PUK leaders.
60.
Mullah Krekar questioned PUK commitment to Kurdish nationalism, claiming that no Kurdish nationalist would invite the United States to defeat the only independent Kurdish state.
61.
Mullah Krekar claimed that if the Islamic Emirate of Kurdistan lived longer, an Ansar al-Islam operation against Turkey would have been inevitable.
62.
In May 2019, due to increased tensions between the United States and Iran, Mullah Krekar stated in a war between the two he would support Iran, saying it was like supporting Hezbollah in a war between them and Israel, despite being Shiite and actively fighting Sunni groups in Iraq and Syria.
63.
In November 2007, Mullah Krekar was the subject of a half-hour investigative report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's international affairs program Foreign Correspondent.
64.
In July 2009, Mullah Krekar was one of the subjects of the NBC's pilot episode of the show The Wanted, describing him as "responsible for killing hundreds of westerners".