A Member of Parliament for Norway’s conservative Progress Party has been charged with bringing what police call “a small amount of narcotics” into the country. MP Gisle Meininger Saudland from Flekkefjord in southwestern Norway is now on leave from his post.
Newspaper Aftenposten reported this week that Saudland was returning in September from a private trip abroad when he was stopped by police at Oslo’s main airport at Gardermoen. Dogs trained to sniff out narcotics had reacted to his luggage. Police were still awaiting results of an analysis of the suspected narcotics, which amounted to around a gram.
Saudland’s party has been in favour of decriminalizing small amounts of narcotics, but its ethical regulations call for “zero tolerance of narcotics in the Progress Party” and of any involvement with illegal substances. A party official told Aftenposten that the party was still waiting “for all the facts in the case, but if the charges are correct, it’s of course unacceptable.”
Saudland, age 38, had said last summer that he would not seek re-election to his seat in Parliament next year, telling newspaper Fædrelandsvennen that he disliked commuting back and forth to Oslo.
NewsinEnglish.no staff