Norway arrests boy on suspicion of plotting ISIS terrorist attack

Syrian teenager was arrested in Oslo

A person has been arrested in Norway on suspicion of planning a terror attack. Reuters

A teenager has been arrested in Norway on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack.

The Syrian youngster, who is believed to have sympathies with ISIS, was arrested in Oslo, Norway’s domestic security agency said on Friday.

The 16-year-old was detained on Thursday.

Head of the security service Hans Sverre Sjoevold told Norwegian broadcaster NRK that the youth was a Syrian national but declined to say whether the attack was planned to take place in Norway.

No details were given as to when the attack was to be carried out.

The boy arrived in Norway through a family reunification scheme.

The security agency said he was expected to appear in court in Oslo on Friday for a custody hearing which would be held behind closed doors.

Earlier on Friday, a 30-year-old Norwegian woman of Pakistani descent, who was repatriated to Norway last year from a refugee camp in north-eastern Syria, was charged with participation in extremist groups.

The woman, who was not identified, had travelled to Syria in June 2013, and is the first woman in Norway to be charged under the offence.

Prosecutor Geir Evanger told NTB that the woman had married three foreign fighters in Syria and had children with two of them.

The woman claimed she was held against her will and later stranded in Syria’s Al Hol, the largest camp housing people who once lived in areas controlled by ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

Terrorist attacks in Norway in recent years have mostly been carried out by right-wing extremists, most notably the 2011 massacre by Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in a bombing and shooting rampage.

Last year, Philip Manshaus, 22, was jailed for 21 years for killing his Chinese-born stepsister and then opening fire on an Oslo mosque in 2019.