Norway Seeks Deportation Of Imam From Iranian-Linked Mosque

Nor­we­gian media is report­ing that the Nor­we­gian Police Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice (PST) is seek­ing to deport an Oslo imam work­ing at the Imam Ali Mosque, an Iran­ian tied Shi­ite cen­ter pre­vi­ous­ly owned by a known Iran­ian influ­ence orga­ni­za­tion.  Accord­ing to a Nor­we­gian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion report:

Novem­ber 9, 2020 PST has asked the Min­istry of Jus­tice to con­sid­er the expul­sion of a reli­gious leader for rea­sons of fun­da­men­tal nation­al inter­ests, but will not pro­vide fur­ther information…The imam’s lawyer, Javeed Hus­sain Shah, says his client dis­putes the grounds for depor­ta­tion. [Google Translation]=

Read the rest here

The report goes on to say that the imam, a Nor­we­gian res­i­dent, came to Nor­way in 2016. When asked about pos­si­ble ties of the imam with the Iran­ian intel­li­gence, Coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence offi­cial Hanne Blomberg replied:

I do not want to con­firm it. But on a gen­er­al basis, I can say that we see in Europe that Iran uses reli­gious cen­ters and mosques as a plat­form for intel­li­gence and sur­veil­lance of oppo­si­tion fig­ures. We have also seen this in Norway.

Accord­ing to a Swedish media report, which referred to the Cen­ter as “con­tro­ver­sial,” has added that its premis­es were owned until recent­ly by the Swedish-reg­is­tered Insam­lingss­tif­telsen Ahl Al-Bayt Assem­bly – Scan­di­navia, in turn, linked to the Iran­ian con­trolled Ahlul Bayt World Assem­bly (ABWA)  In 2015 Con­gres­sion­al tes­ti­mo­ny, a US expert in secu­ri­ty stud­ies described the ABWA as follows:

.…the Ahlul Bayt World Assem­bly (ABWA) was osten­si­bly set up to pro­mote Iran’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary ide­ol­o­gy over­seas and to serve as a link between the Iran­ian cler­i­cal estab­lish­ment and for­eign Shia cler­ics. How­ev­er, ABWA has also served as an effec­tive cov­er for assist­ing with intel­li­gence­gath­er­ing; spot­ting and recruit­ing for­eign stu­dents; and mov­ing mon­ey and materiel des­tined for Qods Force (and MOIS) oper­a­tions. The head of ABWA, Moham­mad Has­san Akhtari, is a two-time ambas­sador to Syr­ia with decades of expe­ri­ence in the Lev­ant dat­ing back to the for­ma­tion of Hezbollah.

In Octo­ber 2020, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed on a webi­nar held by the UK-based Islam­ic Human Rights Com­mis­sion. Titled the  “One state solu­tion,” the event was sup­port­ed by sev­er­al far-left groups and Iran­ian-tied groups, includ­ing the Ahlubayt Islam­ic Mis­sion, described by an Israeli think-tank as the UK branch of the ABWA.