Norway’s Finance Minister and leader of the Progress Party, Siv Jensen, has said she will resign her post and withdraw her party from the the four-party coalition. The move will deprive the Norwegian Prime Minister of her parliamentary majority and could result in new elections. Ms Jensen told reporters: “I brought us into Government, and I’m now bringing the party out.”
The Progress Party, the third largest in Norway, is furious that the Government agreed to allow a 29-year-old Norwegian-Pakistani woman to return to the country with her young son and daughter.
Party members believe that the Jihadi bride used her children as a pretext to to force her own return to Norway, which she left in 2013 to marry a Norwegian- Chilean ISIS fighter, Bastian Vasquez, who was later killed.
The woman remarried, before being detained and held since March 2019 in the Al Hol camp in northeastern Syria.
The Progress Party leader said: “Many believe she used her child as a shield to come back to Norway.
“There are many in Norway who are displeased by this, not just in the Progress Party.”
Ine Eriksen Soreida, the Foreign Affairs Minister, said the decision to allow the ISIS bride to return was based on “humanitarian grounds” over fears for the health of one of her children.
The mother had refused to let the sick child travel alone to Norway and insisted on accompanying the child.
She was promptly arrested on arrival for “participation in a terrorist organisation” and taken with her children to hospital.
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Speaking before the Ms Jensen pulled her party from the coalition, Ms Solberg had told journalists: “”A majority in the government believed that the concern for the child was paramount.”
This comes as two intelligence agencies have confirmed that Amir Mohammed Abdul Rahman al-Mawli al-Salbi has been anointed the new head of ISIS.
He succeeds Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in October last year by US special forces.
Al-Salbi is one one of the founding members of the terror group and is considered one of its most influential ideologues.
He rose through the ranks helped by his background as an Islamic scholar and gave religious rulings that underwrote the genocide against the Yazidis.
ISIS appears to be making a comeback as it steps up its attacks in the centre and north of Iraq.
The organisation has claimed to have carried out 106 attacks between December 20 and 26 to avenge the deaths of al-Baghdadi and the group’s propaganda chief, Abu Hassan al-Muhajir.
A senior Iraqi Kurdish official told The Guardian: “We’ve seen significant uptick in ISIS attacks from mid last year, with the centre of gravity having now moved further south.
“We’re now tracking on average 60 attacks a month through assassinations, roadside bombs and assaults on Iraqi security forces.”