Neither driver has granted any interviews or been publicly identified. But both were suspended from service, subjected to verbal outrage from victim Ali Farah's wife and witnesses, and they became the target of widespread, negative media coverage..
The two men were later cleared after an investigation of the incident in Oslo's Sofienberg Park by the Norwegian Board of Health Supervision (Statens helsetilsyn). Late last month, however, the state Equality and Anti-Discrimination Ombud ruled that Ali Farah was a victim of discrimination, and that the ambulance personnel broke state anti-discrimination laws.
Now Erik Schjenken, a 17-year veteran of Oslo's ambulance service, is speaking out. In a column published in newspaper Aftenposten on Tuesday, he gave his version of what happened in Sofienberg Park on August 6 last year.
He also called for Ali Farah and his wife, Kohinoor Nordberg, to end their "hunt of my colleague and I," contending it "has no root in reality." He urged them to continue their fight against racism and discrimination, "but quit using the public health service and ambulance service" as their example.
Schjenken flatly denied either he or his partner are guilty of racism. No one with racist views can last very long in the ambulance service, he suggested, because of the wide variety of people from all ethnic backgrounds whom they are obliged to assist.
He wrote that just before the call came to head for Sofienberg Park, he and his partner had taken care of an incommunicative asylum seeker from Iraq, and before that an elderly man who had defecated in their ambulance. Those jobs were handled, he wrote, "without irritation or negative thoughts. Urine, feces, vomit and blood are a natural part of our work every day."
First impressions
When they arrived at the park, where Ali Farah reportedly had been beaten by an unknown assailant, they saw him trying to get up. "We noted that he was awake, able to move his arms and legs, and the only visible sign of injury was blood on his face," Schjenken wrote, adding that "we decided to take him to the emergency clinic (Legevakt) for a check-up."
He wrote that they helped the victim get up, but on the way to the ambulance, "he pulled down his pants and urinated on my colleague's leg. My colleague was surprised, pulled away and called him a pig." The victim continued to urinate, then against the ambulance itself, Schjenken claimed.
"That's when we viewed the man as a problem, and decided it was best if the police took him to the clinic," Schjenken wrote. "That, and that alone, is the reason that Ali Farah wasn't transported by ambulance."
Ali Farah was later determined to have sustained severe head injuries and eventually taken to Ullevål Hospital, where he remained in a coma for several days.
"We made a mistake, because we interpreted his urination as willful and a provocation, but NOT because we had racist or discriminatory motives," Schjenken wrote. He applauded Ali Farah's and Kahinoor Nordberg's subsequent campaign against racism, but claimed Oslo's ambulance service is "100 percent professional" and doesn't deserve to be branded as racist.
Different versions of events
Any reconciliation with Nordberg and Farah, however, seems unlikely. Nordberg told Aftenposten.no that she and her husband have yet to receive an apology from either ambulance driver.
"It doesn't help to come now, eight months later, and start to tell me what I should or shouldn't do," Nordberg told Aftenposten.no.
She and Schjenken have quite different versions of what actually happened in the park that day. Nordberg and her husband have reported the drivers to the police, who are also investigating.
