State and Carabinieri police arrested a Gambian national in an antiterrorism operation in Naples on Thursday, sources said.
The arrest comes after investigators found evidence the suspect was planning an attack, the sources said.
Alagie Touray, 21, admitted to investigators that he had received a request to drive a car into a crowd, the sources said. The evidence against him includes a video published on Telegram in which he allegedly pledges alliance to ISIS leader Abū Bakr al-Baghdadi.
He was detained as he left a mosque in Licola, in the province of Naples. Touray landed in Messina along with over 100 other asylum-seekers in March 2017.
He had been living in Pozzuoli, near Naples, for a year. The arrested man had made a request for political asylum and the application was still being considered by the authorities, according to the sources.
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