Refugees ‘spied on and threatened’ August 1, 2013 Refugees in Norway are regularly spied on and threatened by agents of the governments they fled, confirms the acting leader of the counterespionage unit of Norway’s police intelligence unit PST (Politiets sikkerhetstjeneste). Refugee advocates are calling for Norwegian authorities to do more to protect them. “PST has worked on several cases where the refugees’ families in their homelands have been put under pressure,” Ola Børresen of PST told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) on Thursday. Børresen said that “between five and 10″ countries conduct what PST calls “refugee espionage” in Norway, “and we have seen several examples where families in the homeland are pressured.” Scaring them into silence The goal is to silence critics of authoritarian regimes, and Børresen said the spying and threats against both refugees and their families back home are an effective weapon against regime critics. Based on Børresen’s assessment of the frequency of refugee espionage in Norway, the case of an Iranian family who claims to have been threatened and even tortured back in Iran, after a family member who’d fled to Norway criticized the Iranian regime in Oslo newspaper Aftenposten, is by no means unique. Mahmoud Ghadiri secured asylum in Norway after converting to Christianity, and obtained Norwegian citizenship in 2010. He and his sister told NRK on Thursday that after his criticism of the regime was published in Aftenposten, paramilitary troops showed up at his family’s home in Iran with a copy of the Aftenposten article, and proceeded to beat and torture family members. The goal, according to Ghadiri, was to silence him by threatening them. His mother and sister managed to flee and join him in Norway last year. His father’s whereabouts remain unknown.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Aug 2013 19:42:35 +0000
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