Politicians from the Labour Party, the Center Party and the Progress Party want Norway's non-socialist coalition government to explain how Krekar and his family could so openly make trips that clearly defied rules applying to people protected by asylum.
Krekar, who came to Norway as a refugee in 1991, writes about the trips himself in the book he just released last month. He later brought family members to Norway as well, but then they all proceeded to virtually commute between Norway and Northern Iraq.
Even though the Norwegian authorities must have been aware of the trips, the Krekar family was allowed to keep their refugee status and the benefits that entails in Norway.
Several politicians now want to know how that could have happened. Signe Øye of the Labour Party told newspaper Aftenposten that the practice discredits the entire asylum system.
"We should find out who's responsible for this," said Per Sandberg of the Progress Progress, criticizing the "wall of silence" that Norway's immigration agency has built up around the Krekar case.
Magnhild Meltveit Kleppa of the Center Party called the Krekar case "an example of how the system should not function."
'No comment'
Krekar writes that he and his family were initially placed in Tønsberg, a town south of Oslo, in the fall of 1991. He admits that they left Tønsberg just six months later, as soon as they obtained Norwegian travel documents, and traveled back to Northern Iraq, which they earlier had fled.
Tønsberg city official Cecilia Hagelind told Aftenposten that both the immigration agency (UDI) and local police followed the case when Krekar moved out of Tønsberg. "Beyond that, we can't comment," she said.
It remains a mystery why Krekar's asylum status wasn't revoked immediately at that time, since travel back to Iraq constituted a clear violation of his asylum terms. Nor is it clear how Krekar's wife and children could later be granted both permanent residence status and citizenship in Norway, even though they also had traveled back to the country they supposedly needed to flee.
UDI officials referred all questions on the matter to the state department in charge of immigration (Kommunaldepartementet), which is headed by Erna Solberg of the Conservatives. Officials there said they could not comment on individual cases.
