Author: Agence France Presse
Publication: Arab News
Date: September 7, 2005
A Muslim preacher has arrived in
his home country Morocco after being arrested overnight in Turin under
Italy's newly adopted counterterrorism law, accused of extremism, the Interior
Ministry announced yesterday.
The ANSA news agency had said earlier
that Bouriqi Bouchta, the self-styled "imam of Turin," was arrested at
his home in the racially mixed Porta Palazzo area of the city.
Italy adopted a counterterrorism
law at the end of July on the initiative of Interior Minister Giuseppe
Pisanu.
The legislation makes it easier
to expel foreigners deemed a risk to national security or found supporting
or helping terrorist groups.
The law also allows terrorism suspects
to be held 24 hours without charge and questioned without a lawyer present.
Bouchta, 40, was the first person
to be ordered out of the country under the new law, but four other Muslim
preachers have been deported from Italy since 2003 for "serious public
security concerns."
Bouchta has long been controversial,
demanding for example that women should be allowed to wear a veil for official
identity photographs.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks
in the United States he was accused of expressing solidarity with Al-Qaeda
leader Osama Bin Laden during prayers in a mosque, but he denied this.
Bouchta was prominent among demonstrators
in Rome on April 29 calling for the release of Italian hostages in Iraq.
In November 2003 he criticized the
expulsion of another Muslim leader from the Turin region, Abdoul Mamour,
saying, "We preach love, not hate."
The president of the Islamic Institute
of Turin, Abdel Hamid Shaari, said he was surprised by the expulsion, telling
ANSA that Bouchta's views had evolved since he arrived in Italy in the
early 1990s "when he did not know the reality" of the country.
But the xenophobic Northern League,
a government coalition partner, has been foremost in demanding the imam's
expulsion. It staged a demonstration against him in April 2003, saying
he was close to extremists and had praised the Sept. 11 attacks.