Norway keeps Iraqi Kurd in jail in militant probe

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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L13196502.htm

OSLO, Jan 13 (Reuters) - An Oslo court extended an Iraqi Kurd's detention on Tuesday to let police investigate suspicions that he led a militant Islamic group blamed for suicide bombings in Iraq from the Norwegian capital.

The appeals court granted a police demand to keep Mullah Krekar detained until February 2, overturning a lower court ruling last week that he should be freed. Krekar was arrested in Oslo on January 2.

"Several witness accounts give the impression that suicide and bomb attacks (against U.S.-led forces in Iraq) could not take place without (Krekar's) knowledge," the three-judge panel wrote in a ruling.

It said there were reasonable grounds to suspect that Krekar, who is also fighting an expulsion order from Norway where he won refugee status with his family in 1991, still led the radical Islamic group Ansar al-Islam in northern Iraq.

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