Norway puts off disarming police

Norway’s police, which was to stop wearing their service weapons this week, will remain armed until December 1 because of the Paris attacks, Norwegian authorities said on Monday.

The country’s 6,000 uniformed officers have been exceptionally authorised to wear their firearms on their belts since November 2014 due to a heightened threat of Islamist attacks.

In ordinary circumstances, the police keep its firearms locked in its patrol cars.

Last week, just hours before the Paris attacks, Norway’s police chief had announced they would be unarmed again as of Tuesday, after the intelligence service PST lowered the threat level at the end of October. The PST said arrests in Jihadist circles and the departure of radicalised militants to West Asia had significantly reduced the likelihood of an attack.

But on Monday, the police said that while the threat level remained unchanged in Norway, it would postpone the change in procedure until December 1.

“The most important thing we can do right now is to give ourselves the best overview of the international and national situation,” a senior police official, Kaare Songstad, said in a statement.

In the wake of Friday’s attacks in the French capital that have left at least 129 people dead, Norwegian justice minister Anders Anundsen asked the country’s intelligence service to re-evaluate the risk that Jihadists belonging to the ISIS group might try to slip into Norway among the large numbers of migrants arriving.

While Norwegian human rights activists are generally opposed to the arming of police officers, the police itself is largely in favour of the measure.

Norway is known as a generally peaceful country.