Defense and police: scandalous collusion

Manager: This is an editorial from Dagbladet, and expresses the newspaper’s view. Dagbladet’s political editor is responsible for the editorial.

Over several years have The armed forces and the police collaborated on illegal and sometimes career-destructive methods in the hunt for drug users. The lawsuit that six involuntarily discharged guardsmen are now bringing against the Ministry of Defense is completely appropriate, but we should have been spared this. Unfortunately, there is reason to fear that far more people are exposed to the treatment. A treatment that may be in breach of human rights.

It was in the summer of 2022 that it became known through NRK that 30 soldiers in HM The King’s Guard were thrown out after testing positive on a drug test. They had used drugs in their spare time, during leave in the summer holidays. The summons against the ministry was delivered on Monday and the plaintiffs allege that there was a violation of human rights when they were stripped of their security clearance and dismissed, after first being pressured to confess.

Unfortunately, it stops not with this case. For the past year, more unculture has been uncovered around the Armed Forces’ handling of soldiers’ drug use. The newspaper Dagens Næringsliv has described in several reports how the police and the Norwegian Armed Forces have exchanged information about drug use in an unregulated manner. In that case, it is not about soldiers who have been legally convicted, but, for example, about the Armed Forces having irregular access to a closed intelligence register with the police.

The opposite is the case of the Armed Forces right to carry out drug testing of soldiers abused in the sense that it has led to a police report. The basis for carrying out such tests without the prior approval of a lawyer has its background in the assessment of whether the soldier is fit for duty. It shall not be used as a basis for punishment. Nevertheless, a number of soldiers have been reported to the police in such cases, according to Dagens Næringsliv.

On the sidelines was another organisation, which carried out extensive collaboration with the police, the Norwegian Narcotics Police Association, NNPF. An association that has now changed its name to the Norwegian Narcotics Prevention Association (NNF), after the year-long collaboration was documented by the so-called Role Understanding Committee.

Maybe it is too hard to determine that there has been a culture of collusion, but we see that this has existed in several arenas when it comes to drug use. A regular occurrence is that basic legal principles are set aside and that young people have their careers and parts of their lives destroyed. This should of course have been sorted out by the Norwegian Armed Forces before it became a court case, because the case is scandalous.