Torstein Dahle

Who is Torstein Dahle?

Torstein Dahle is a Norwegian politician and economist. He works at the Bergen University College and represents Red Party in the city council of Bergen. Dahle was born in Oslo.

At age 14 Dahle joined Lambertseter Youth Conservatives. After moving to Bergen in 1966 he was radicalized and joined AKP in the early 1970s. Since its foundation in 2007 Dahle was leader of the Red, and he was previously leader of Red's predecessor, Red Electoral Alliance, from 2003 to 2007. He was succeeded by Turid Thomassen in 2010. He was also a founding member of Red Electoral Alliance and Workers' Communist Party in 1973, but left the latter in 1997.

On 23 July 2007 he became subject to media attention when he said that the Taliban and other Afghan rebels had the full right of fighting the Norwegian soldiers of the International Security Assistance Force force stationed in Afghanistan. The attention occurred only days later with the death of a Norwegian army officer in the Logar Province as a Norwegian military unit came under hostile fire. He later commented that he did not support the death of Norwegian military personnel.

Dahle is openly homosexual since the late 1960s.