ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Norwegian police have arrested radical Kurdish radical cleric Najmadin Faraj Ahmad, also known as Mullah Krekar. Krekar’s alleged website announced on Thursday that police had entered into the cleric’s home in Oslo without uniforms and charged him with publicly encouraging violent acts. The cleric will be transferred to the court for sentencing and it is not clear whether he is going to be released or put in jail, the website said. In a recent interview with Norwegian TV station NRK, Mullah Krekar expressed happiness over the January 7 Paris attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine, and called on the youth of Norway to go to Syria. Krekar, former leader of the Islamist armed group Ansar al-Islam, told NRK: “We believe in our religion, and protecting our religion is more valuable than our life. We protect our religion with our blood” Kerkar also defended the perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo attack. “They defended their dignity, their sacredness. They were the genuine jihadists,” he said.
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