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Norway: Minister resigns

01 November 1996

Grete Faremo, Minister of Justice during the period when the Lund-commission investigated the Norwegian security police (POT) (see Statewatch, vol 6 no 3) was forced to leave her new post in the government (Minister of Industrial Affairs) on 16 December. During her period as Minister of Justice, Berge Furre, one of the members of the Lund-committee, was actively surveilled by the security police. The head of the security police, Hans Olov Östgaard, resigned the same day after having tried to defend the necessity to surveil Furre. The security police did not like the Lund commission's report which is the most important investigation into the secret police in the western world since the Canadian MacDonald Commission in the seventies. The attempt to undermine Berge Furre was revealed when it became known that four times the security police tried, without success, to get information on Furre from the former STASI-register. The new Norwegian Social Democratic Prime Minister Jagland now says there must be new oversight of the different secret services in Norway: "Taking in account what has become obvious in the last days I believe that it is necessary to start such an overview. This should be done immediately, even though the parliament still not has finished their examination of the Lund-report" (see Statewatch, vol 6 no 3).