On Tuesday, Arfan Bhatti will appear in court in Islamabad, where they will decide whether he should be released from custody on bail.

The message I have received is that there is a short hearing on bail and that they will later consider questions about extradition, says Bhatti’s Norwegian lawyer John Christian Elden to NRK.

Norwegian police have been asking for Bhatti’s extradition from Pakistan since November last year. Bhatti is charged with complicity in serious terrorism after the terrorist attack in Oslo in June last year.

Zia Ur Rehman, Arfan Bhatti’s Pakistani defence lawyer, claims that the evidence against his client is weak.

To be completely honest, if this case had been in any developed country, he would not have been extradited on the basis of the evidence that the Norwegian authorities have provided to the Pakistani police, he says.

The lawyer claims that it is pressure from the Norwegian authorities that keeps Bhatti in custody, not the evidence against him.

Unfortunately, the pressure from the Norwegian authorities is very high. That is why he is in custody. In my opinion, he should not have been inside for a single day, says Rehman.

Arfan Bhatti himself believes that the charges against him are baseless and that he is innocent. He says via his lawyer in Pakistan that he would like to come to Norway voluntarily, but that he does not want to come with a police escort.

Norwegian and Pakistani police have cooperated on the Bhatti case since last autumn.

The cooperation between the Norwegian and Pakistani police has been good in this case, says police lawyer Børge Enoksen.