Mullah Krekar

Najmadin Faraj Ahmad (Kurdish: نەجمەدین فەرەج ئەحمەد, July 7, 1956), better known as Mullah Krekar (Kurdish: مه‌لا کرێکار), is a Kurdish Sunni Islamic scholar. He was a commander for the Peshmerga unit belonging to the Kurdistan Islamic Movement during the 1991 Iraqi uprisings. Later, he founded Ansar al-Islam in 2001, and left for Norway in 2003, where he founded Rawti Shax. He was arrested and is currently serving a prison sentence in Italy, after having been extradited from Norway in 2020. He came to Norway as a refugee from Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991. His wife, Rukhosh Ahmad, and his four children have Norwegian citizenship, but not Krekar himself. He speaks Kurdish, Arabic, Persian, Norwegian and English. He had no relation to Jama'at Ansar al-Islam, which emerged long after Ansar al-Islam disbanded.

Krekar was the original leader of the Islamist armed group Ansar al-Islam, which was set up and commenced operations in Northern Iraq while he had refugee status in Norway. Krekar claims, however, not to have had foreknowledge of the various terrorist attacks performed by the group he was leading. Since February 2003 he has an expulsion order against him, which is suspended pending Iraqi government guarantees that he will not face torture or execution. Norway is committed to international treaties which prohibit the expulsion of an individual without such a guarantee.

Kurdish authorities in the Kurdistan Regional Government have repeatedly asked for Mullah Krekar to be extradited from Norway. The death penalty remains on the books in the Kurdistan region. Most death sentences have been changed into life sentences since the Kurdish authorities took power in 1992, the exception being that eleven alleged members of Ansar al-Islam were hanged in the regional capital of Erbil in October 2006. He has as of 8 December 2006 been on the UN terror list, and as of 8 November 2007 been judged by the Supreme Court of Norway as a "danger to national security".

On March 26, 2012, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison for making repeated death threats against Norwegian politicians and the Kurds if they pursued certain civil actions against him. He has appealed this prison sentence. The next day, March 27, 2012, he was arrested by the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) and Norwegian Police and taken into protective custody and incarceration. This occurred after certain additional statements of a threatening nature were linked to him, suggesting that others might take retaliatory actions against Norwegians if his civil prison sentence were implemented.

In 2020, he was extradited to Italy. In 2022, his 12-year prison sentence was upheld when the Italian Supreme Court rejected his appeal.