Author: Emilio Gioventu
Publication: Reuters
Date: January 31, 2003
Italian police have arrested 28
Pakistanis suspected of links to al Qaeda in one of the biggest anti-terrorism
operations Italy has seen since the September 11 attacks on the United
States.
Military police burst into an apartment
in central Naples on Wednesday night as part of a routine sweep against
illegal immigration and ended up discovering enough explosives to
blow up a three-story building, officials said on Friday.
They arrested all 28 men staying
in the apartment after finding 28 ounces of explosives, 230 feet
of fuse and various electronic detonators crammed behind a false
wall.
Islamic religious texts, photos
of "jihad" (holy war) martyrs, piles of false documents, maps of
the Naples area, addresses of global contacts and more than 100 mobile
telephones were also found in the run-down lodgings, police said.
A judicial source said the maps
had various targets marked on them including the headquarters of
NATO's southern European command on the city's outskirts, the U.S.
consulate in Naples and a U.S. Navy air base at Capodichino, outside
the city.
Lieutenant Colonel Pat Barnes, a
spokesman for U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, said protection
levels at all U.S. naval facilities in Italy were raised one notch
on Thursday night as a result of the arrests.
In a statement, the police said
they believed the men, aged 20 to 48, were members of Osama bin Laden's
al Qaeda network.
"The men have been arrested and
charged with association with international terrorism, illegal possession
of explosive material, falsification of documents and receiving stolen
goods," the statement from Naples police headquarters said.
Police said the explosive material
was sufficient to make a bomb capable of blowing up a three-story
building and that some of the fuse was laced with highly flammable
nitroglycerine.
As well as the religious texts written
in Pakistan's main language Urdu, cuttings of Pakistani newspapers
and manuscripts repeating the phrase "God is great" were found.
PAKISTAN ANGER
Pakistan's ambassador to Italy,
Zafar Hilali, denied the men were terrorists and said the arrests
appeared to form part of a campaign of targeting innocent Pakistanis
living in Italy.
"From the information we have, none
of these arrests had anything to do with terrorism," he said, adding
that 24 of the men had applied for permits to work in Italy and were
legal. They were unfortunate only to be living in what he said was
a Mafia-owned house.
"I mean, what are 28 people doing
in one place, in a Mafia-ruled area? Is that how terrorists behave?
Do they all live together? And only one gun has been found -- 28
people and one gun. I mean, what do they do, take turns?
"Frankly I think it's much ado about
nothing, but we are waiting for the information."
In nearly 18 months since the September
11 attacks, more than 100 people have been arrested in Italy on suspicion
of links to terror organizations. Seventeen have been convicted,
but most have been released for lack of evidence.
Police have grown wary of touting
what appear breakthroughs in the fight against terrorism, and sources
said magistrates were irritated that news of the latest arrests had
leaked.
At the same time, the evidence police
appear to have seems much greater than in previous operations of
the kind.
Police have made raids throughout
Italy in recent months, arresting five Moroccans near Venice earlier
this month.
In that round-up, police seized
plastic explosives, an unmarked map of the London underground and
a number of Italian maps on which sites were circled, including a
street leading to a major NATO installation.
Italy has put itself at the frontline
of President Bush's war on terror and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi
has repeatedly said he will do all in his power to track down any
Islamic militants hiding out in the country.