A Norwegian party leader appears in a video stealing glasses from an airport store

An internal surveillance camera filmed Norwegian MP Bjornar Moxnes, the 11-year-old leader of the rising Marxist Rødt or “Red” party, as he stole sunglasses last Saturday from a store in the free zone at Gardermoen International Airport in the capital, Oslo, according to what we see in a video broadcast yesterday by the local newspaper VG on its website. With news that Bjornar Moxense, 41, has paid a fine of 3,000 Norwegian kroner, equivalent to $282, as a punishment for what he did.

In the video, we see the father of two sons from a wife who separated from her by divorce a year ago, as he puts glasses on his eyes and tries them on more than once in front of a saleswoman from the store, and when he was sure that they fit him, he placed them on a cart with his travel bag on them, and at that moment the saleswoman left him because she thought he would go to the cashier to pay for it. He didn’t, but pulled it off the cart and slipped it into his back pocket.

Soon, the store management called the airport security, and when they stopped him, he told them that he did not intend to steal, but rather put the glasses in his luggage by mistake. However, the shop management did not trust what he said and summoned the police, whose investigation with him ended with an apology he made, followed by a statement read by Al-Arabiya.net translated from the NRK public radio website, in which he said: “I thought it was my glasses, and I panicked as soon as I noticed the error, and I was worried that I If I return, I will become the hero of a scandal that could harm the party and its members,” he said.

“the glasses thief”

After the statement to the radio and the spread of the news of the glasses in the local media and communication sites, the party secretary, Reidar Strisland, hastened to state that the pressures of the events had affected Mocksnes and that the party had given him sick leave for two weeks, to be replaced by his deputy, Marie Sneve Martinussen, as the acting leader, “because the party leadership has complete confidence in his work,” which we find Also, his biography is rich in important achievements.

One of the achievements of the “glasses thief”, as his political opponents have come to call him, is that the “Red” party, which was founded 16 years ago from the rubble of the Norwegian revolutionary socialist and communist movements, doubled its deputies four times during his reign, and moved from the margins of politics to parliament. Despite al-Sarih’s commitment to communism in his platform, he won eight seats out of 169 in the last 2021 elections.