Arne Treholt

Arne Treholt (13 December 1942 – 12 February 2023) was a Norwegian civil servant, diplomat and Labour Party politician who was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union and Iraq. Treholt served as the State Secretary under Norwegian Minister of Maritime Law, Jens Evensen, from 1976–78, as a Norwegian counsellor at the United Nations in New York from 1979–82, as a student at the Norwegian Joint Staff College from 1982–83, and head of the press department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1983. He held connections with Soviet and Iraqi agents during this period. Treholt was arrested in 1984 and sentenced to 20 years in prison for espionage the following year, but was pardoned in 1992. He was the first Norwegian to be convicted of espionage. His father Thorstein Treholt was a senior member of the Labour Party who served as the Minister of Agriculture in the 1970s. Before entering politics Arne was a journalist for the Arbeiderbladet.