MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Norway’s parliament has accidentally published confidential personal information about refugees on the Internet, including a long list of asylum seeking children, local media reported Friday.
The sensitive data was available on the parliament’s website for about a day before being removed on Friday, according to local broadcaster NRK. Eight people downloaded the documents.
“If one of these eight is a Taliban mullah in Afghanistan, the scandal may be a fact,” NRK writes.
The mistakenly published data included an overview of all refugee children who were returned to their home countries in 2014 after staying in Norway for more than three years.
The documents also included a note from the Afghan embassy in Oslo, a note from Afghanistan’s foreign ministry, and a note from the Nigerian embassy in Stockholm. One of these reportedly expressed concern over a named family.
According to Bard Vegar Solhjell, a member of the parliament’s control and constitutional affairs committee, the committee and the country’s justice ministry share blame for the incident.
“The ministry of justice, which did not inform that the documents were exempt from public disclosure, and the control committee that did not double check this, must take joint responsibility,” Solhjell told NRK.
The documents were uploaded by someone in the parliament’s administration after being sent to lawmakers by the justice ministry, the broadcaster said.
Hundreds of refugee children were sent back from Norway last year, 80 of whom had lived in the country for more than four years, according to data from Norway's National Police Directorate.
