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Leader of Norway's populist Progress party (Fremskritspartiet) Siv Jensen adresses the media in Oslo, Norway on January 20, 2020. Photo: Fredrik Varfjell / AFP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Norway's populist Progress Party said Monday it was leaving the right-wing coalition government over the repatriation of an alleged Islamic State (ISIS) member and her two children last week.
"We don't compromise with people who have voluntarily joined terror organisations," party leader Siv Jensen told reporters in Oslo.
"We don't get enough of the Progress Party's policies through," Jensen added.
Without the Progress Party, the coalition, headed by Prime Minister Erna Solberg, loses its majority in parliament, but she will still remain in charge.
As she announced her party's exit, Jensen said it was "natural" that Solberg would remain prime minister.
The 29-year-old Norwegian woman, who is of Pakistani origin, was married to an Islamic State fighter.
She was repatriated with her two children on humanitarian grounds. The Progress Party had been in favour of bringing back the children but opposed her return.
The woman travelled to Syria from the Norwegian capital in 2012 with her now-deceased husband, before giving birth to a son and daughter, aged five and three respectively.
She was charged with "membership of a terrorist organization" by Norwegian police for alleged membership of both the al-Nusra Front and ISIS, and remanded in custody on Monday.
The controversy has not only “upset the KRF, but a lot of Norwegians,” Finance Minister and KRF leader Siv Jensen said on Thursday morning.
However the other three parties making up the coalition government ignored the Progress Party’s objections and approved the repatriation of all three family members.
The woman’s five-year-old son and three-year-old daughter, born to different jihadist fighters, have been hospitalised.
“Those children have been in a very demanding situation, a situation no children should be in. Like all children in Norway, they are entitled to the necessary health care, care and protection,” Norway’s Minister of Children and Family Ingolf Ropstad told Norwegian news outlet VG before they flew out from the Kurdistan Region capital of Erbil on Thursday.
The repatriation of women and children linked to ISIS has polarized international opinion, particularly in Europe. Following the fall of Baghouz, the caliphate's last bastion in eastern Syria, women have pleaded with their governments to return home, calls which have largely gone unanswered as states grapple with security and legal issues surrounding their return.
Some have repatriated women and children on a case by case basis – including Norway, which brought home five orphans stranded in northern Syria last June.
Additional reporting by AFP
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