Politicians and pilots in Norway denounced a ruling...

Politicians and pilots in Norway denounced a ruling that gave asylum to two grenade-wielding Iranian hijackers who forced a plane to divert to Oslo in 1993.The Norwegian Directorate of Immigration let the two brothers stay in Norway on humanitarian grounds, arguing they could face the death penalty if returned to Iran after they hijacked a Russian airliner.But the centre-right government, airline pilots and some opposition politicians were aghast, saying the ruling could encourage copycat hijackings. Decisions by the state-funded directorate cannot be overruled.
The Foreign Ministry stoked the controversy by saying that its embassy in Tehran had twice, in 1994 and 2001, advised the Directorate of Immigration that the two could safely be sent home after serving a jail term in Russia for the hijacking. "The embassy believed there was no risk of the death penalty, or even of any jail term," Foreign Ministry spokesman Karsten Klepsvik told Reuters. Under Iranian law, the two could not be tried twice for the same crime, he said.
The head of the directorate, Trygve Nordby, said he had rejected the Foreign Ministry's advice."We knew (the ministry's) conclusion when we made our decision," he told NRK radio, saying the directorate had paid more attention to warnings about the risk of execution from two independent lawyers in Iran and human rights groups.
The two men were among three Iranians who hijacked a Russian plane in 1993 with 50 people aboard on a flight from the Azeri capital Baku to the Russian city of Perm in the Urals. Waving hand grenades and a false bomb, they forced the pilot to fly to Oslo, where they said the hijacking was a protest against human rights abuses in Iran. They applied for asylum after freeing all the passengers and crew unhurt.
Norway's Justice Minister at the time said that they would not be allowed to stay. They were extradited to Russia in 1995 and sentenced to up to 5.5 years in jail but were released in 1997.The Norwegian daily Aftenposten said that one or both men later travelled to Denmark where the authorities rejected a new request for asylum.
Norwegian authorities do not normally let in asylum applicants rejected by other west European nations.