An Italo-Moroccan accused of
belonging to the Islamic State (ISIS) Islamist terror group was
arrested in Turin on Wednesday and police said he had been
planning to use trucks for attacks and seeking 'lone wolves' to
carry them out.
He was the second alleged terrorist to be arrested in Italy
in two days.
Elmahdi Halili, 23, the author of the first ISIS propaganda
message in Italian, was captured at the end of a probe by
anti-terrorism police in the northwestern Italian city.
At the moment of his arrest, Halili reportedly shouted
"Tyrants! I'm going to prison with my head held high".
Turin Police Chief Francesco Messina said "he is a very
motivated individual, with no intention of repenting".
Messina said "we had to act immediately to eliminate this
threat: Halili could have carried out attacks".
"He had moved from self-indoctrination to trying to contact
others, 'lone wolves', who could carry out terrorist actions,
and he was weighing how to use knives and how to prepare trucks
for attacks," Messina said.
In some cases he met these lone wolves, Messina said, who
were Italians converted to Islam, Ghanaians and Moroccans, often
already known to police for other crimes.
Messina said "it was a threat in a fluid context, not precise
but very delicate."
He said "Daesh (ISIS) has been defeated on the field of
battle but its propaganda continues".
The head of the DIGOS special security police in Turin, Carlo
Ambra, who coordinated the operation, said "it was time to
intervene.
"We couldn't afford to let him identify a target to strike.
"There was a need to act immediately".
Ambra said the operation was called 'Love and Hate' because
"Halili said that Islam is a balance between these two feelings:
love for believers and hate for unbelievers".
Halili's younger sister told reporters: "He had sworn to us
that he wouldn't do it any more.
"And, instead, we are here in the same situation as before",
she said in the family home in the outlying Turin district of
Lanzo.
Halili was already arrested in Brescia in 2015 and
plea-bargained a term of two years for apology of terrorism,
police said.
The probe, codenamed Balkan Connection, identified people
able to enlist fighters for ISIS.
These included the Brescian foreign fighter Anas
El Abboubi who was arrested and then released by a parole court
and went to fight in Syria.
He is believed to have died.
Police on Wednesday carried out searches across northern
Italy - in Milan, Modena, Bergamo and Reggio Emilia - and also
in Naples against individuals suspected of links to extremist
Islamist circles, police said.
A number of Italians who have converted to Islam are also
involved in the probe, as well as citizens of foreign origin,
police said.
Charges against them include waging a campaign of
radicalization and proselytism via the Internet, judicial
sources said.
On Tuesday in Foggia an Italo-Egyptian was arrested on
charges of teaching children to kill for jihad.
An Italian teacher from Foggia who works in Ferrara has been
placed under investigation in that probe, judicial sources said
Wednesday.
The teacher is said to have converted to Islam.
An investigation by anti-mafia police showed the man had been
in contact with the Foggia Islamic cultural centre run by Mohy
Eldin Mostafa Omer Abdel Rahman, sources said.
In response to the arrests and an alert from EU border agency
Frontex on possible migrant landing infiltrations, anti-migrant
League leader Matteo Salvini on Wednesday called for an end to
all migrant landings in Italy because of the terror threat.
"The risk of terrorism if very high: after the arrests and
Frontex's alert on the possibility of there being terrorists
infiltrated among those landing, we ask for an immediate move,
an ironclad control on all our borders by land and sea and the
suspension of all further landings on our coasts," he said.
In an interview with La Stampa newspaper Wednesday, caretaker
Interior Minister Marco Minniti said "the picture of the ISIS
threat remains unchanged.
"May the new government continue with the deportation of
those who have been radicalised".
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