Police in the southern city of
Bari on Monday arrested a 45-year-old Iraqi national, Majid
Muhamad, as part of an investigation into Islamist terrorism.
Bari anti-Mafia prosecutors are probing at least 10
suspects in an international terrorism investigation that led to
Muhamad's arrest on charges of abetting illegal immigration.
The other suspects are being probed for providing
logistical support to foreign fighters, police sources said.
Muhamad is thought to have helped people linked to an
Italian cell of the Ansar al-Islam terror group and "aiding the
entry into Europe of people linked to Islamist fundamentalist
combatant circles," police sources said.
He allegedly organized the illegal entry into Italy of
numerous foreigners using fake documents including 11 people
from Egypt, Iran, Morocco, Pakistan, and Turkey whom he helped
find accommodation in Bari between March and September,
investigators said.
Muhamad was released from an Italian prison in January
after serving 10 years for international terrorism.
He moved to Bari after his release, after winning an appeal
against an expulsion order.
Within months of his release he became the leader of a
group of foreigners including Georgians, Moroccans, and
Tunisians he met in a kebab bar in Bari, investigators said.
Among those he had contact with were an Iraqi citizen,
Ridha Shwan Jalal, arrested in Bari August 5 as he was about to
embark on a ferry to Greece.
Some months before, Jalal had asked a travel agency in
Matera for an estimate on 20 plane tickets from Sulaymaniyah
International Airport in Iraqi Kurdistan to Paris via Istanbul.
The tickets were for as many Iraqis who would leave in groups of
five, investigators said.
Jalal was released and vanished.
Investigators later learned that he transited through the
port of Bari the same day as Abdeslam Salah, the terrorist being
hunted for the November 13 terror attacks in Paris.
Muhamad had telephone contact with numerous people believed
to be linked to the Ansar al-Islam terrorist group, including
some who were arrested recently, they added.
Many of them addressed him as Mullah Fouad, the name he
used inside Ansar al-Islam.
Wiretapped phone conversations revealed Muhamad used what
police believe to be code for explosives when he spoke of 2
kilos of "truffles" his wife sent him from Iraq.
Investigators are checking on people Muhamad called from
his mobile in Afghanistan, Britain, the Czech Republic, France,
Germany, Greece, Norway, and Tunisia.
Many contacts were with members of a terror group based in
Parma that was broken up by arrests but that he evidently was
trying to rebuild, they said.
During a February raid on a Bari apartment, police
confiscated from Majid postcards he sent from prison in which he
exalted the jihad, or holy war.
He also mentioned the Islamic State (ISIS) extremist
organization as early as June 2011 though it was not generally
known then, police added.
Bari Police Chief Antonio De Iesu said there is no evidence
so far that Majid or the others under investigation were
planning a terrorist attack, but said inquiries are continuing.
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