The National Commissioner of the Icelandic Police is currently investigating a reported threat to national security, according to a report in Fréttabladid today. The report states that at the beginning of this year, Reykjavík police was alerted to a man who was looking into instructions for making bombs on foreign websites. The paper claims to have information that the man is of foreign origin and lives and works in Iceland.
A report on the prevention of terrorism in Iceland, prepared earlier this year by two European Union experts, found that police authorities in Iceland had limited authorization to investigate cases that are not direct violations of the law. The authors of the report pointed out that there were no specific regulations allowing for the employment of special investigative measures, particularly preventative measures, that security agencies normally use before an official police investigation begins.
However, a professor of law at the University of Iceland is quoted in the Fréttabladid report as saying that police are authorized to employ measures such as searches, wiretapping, photographing and filming when it is considered warranted.
