OSLO: Norwegian police said Monday they have launched an “aggravated corruption” investigation against a high-profile diplomat, Mona Juul, and her husband Terje Rod-Larsen, over the couple’s links to late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The police economic crime unit Okokrim said in statement that the probe began last week and that an Oslo residence was searched on Monday, as well as a residence belonging to a witness.
“We have launched an investigation to determine whether any criminal offenses have been committed. We are facing a comprehensive and, by all accounts lengthy investigation,” Okokrim chief Pal Lonseth, said.
Juul, 66, and Rod-Larsen, 78, played key roles in the secret Israeli-Palestinian negotiations which led to the Oslo Accords of the early 1990s.
Epstein left $10 million in his will to the couple’s two children, according to Norwegian media.
“Among other things, Okokrim will investigate whether she received benefits in connection to her position,” the statement said.
On Sunday, the foreign ministry announced that Juul had resigned from her position as ambassador to Jordan and Iraq.
“Juul’s contact with the convicted abuser Epstein has shown a serious lapse in judgment,” Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said in connection to the announcement.
She had already been temporarily suspended last week pending an internal investigation by the ministry into her alleged links to Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking.
Norway’s political and royal circles have been thrust into the eye of the Epstein storm, including the CEO of the World Economic Forum Borge Brende.
Former prime minister Thorbjorn Jagland, is also being investigated for “aggravated corruption” over links to Epstein while he was chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee — which awards the Nobel Peace Prize — and as secretary general of the Council of Europe.
Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit has also come under scrutiny for her relationship with Epstein, which on Friday she said she “deeply regretted.”
On Monday, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store voiced support for the establishing of an independent commission set up by Parliament, to fully examine the nature of the ties between these figures and Epstein.
Norway launches probe of Middle East diplomat and husband over Epstein links
https://arab.news/8dcqd
Norway launches probe of Middle East diplomat and husband over Epstein links
- Mona Juul resigned from her position as ambassador to Jordan and Iraq
- Juul and her husband Terje Rod-Larsen played key roles in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations which led to the Oslo Accords
US labels Sudan’s Muslim Brotherhood as ‘terrorists’
- Designation comes after the US in January declared several other Muslim Brotherhood branches to be terrorist organizations
WASHINGTON: The United States said Monday it will label the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan as a terrorist organization and accused the group of receiving support from Iran.
The designation, which will be effective in a week, comes after the United States in January declared several other Muslim Brotherhood branches to be terrorist organizations, including in its historic base of Egypt.
“The Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood uses unrestrained violence against civilians to undermine efforts to resolve the conflict in Sudan and advance its violent Islamist ideology,” the State Department said in a statement.
The Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood “has contributed upwards of 20,000 fighters to the war in Sudan, many receiving training and other support from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” the elite ideological wing of Tehran’s military, the State Department said.
The State Department accused the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood of having “conducted mass executions of civilians in areas they captured.”
Iran, run by Shiite clerics, and the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni organization that historically had extensive social networks inside Egypt, both have supported Sudan’s army.
The army has been engaged for nearly three years in a brutal civil war against the paramilitary Rapid Support Force (RSF), with the fighting claiming tens of thousands of lives, displacing more than 11 million people and plunging areas into famine-like conditions.
The United States last year said that the RSF has carried out acts of genocide with systematic killings and sexual violence against black Sudanese. The United States also said the army carried out war crimes.
Targeting the Muslim Brotherhood has also been a rallying cry in Washington for some conservative Republicans, in part over unfounded conspiracy theories that the group is trying to impose Islamic sharia law in the United States.
