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| Europe |
| No al-Qaeda operational cells left in Italy |
| 2004-04-10 |
| There are no operational al-Qaida cells in Italy ready to strike on a specific date. We did receive rumours but after checking them they turned out to be unreliable. The Interior ministry and the intelligence services announced that the level of alert will remain high but reckon that a level of "red" alert has not been reached. The interior ministry and the police forces came to this conclusion by examining the many reports of our secret services. The news of an imminent "attack with explosives" in Rome, part of an intelligence report, is considered unreliable by the interior ministry, which points out that that particular report had been analysed two weeks ago during a meeting of the Technical and Strategic Committee, attended by the interior minister himself and chiefs of the secret services, the police and the carabinieri. In fact, two days ago minister Pisanu had said in parliament that "international Islamic terrorism" is "a many-sided threat which is difficult to predict and which can be perpetrated by independent characters or by sleeping cells in the country," but he had ruled out "excessive alarms," stating that "we are doing all we can to assess the actual terrorist threat in order to fight it as effective as possible." According to intelligence sources which tapped phone conversations, Italy is not considered, at least for now, a target, not because it does not feature on the list of Islamic cells, but because it is used as a "bridge," to pass through or to leave. One wire-tap specifically mentions the fact that in Italy it is possible to move about, organise themselves and leave to become a 'martyr'. On other EU countries the law is more restrictive. The report also states that in Italy it is possible to steals IDs which can be used by proper terrorist cells which strike abroad. The intelligence believes, in fact, that "there are no al-Qaida cells in Italy" in the sense of "strategic organisation". There are however two other levels in Italy, less dangerous but to be taken serious. The first "Input Level" allegedly consists of isolated fanatic Muslims, like the Moroccan man who blew himself up in his car (with two gas tanks in his car) in Brescia in front of a Mc DonaldÂ’s; the second, more worrying level, which is defined as "widespread" consists of isolated groups of Islamic fundamentalists which could come into action, not by carrying out orders but spontaneously, "after reading an al-Qaida appeal on the Internet." And as an act of prevention last week 161 illegal immigrants were searched and sent home as they were suspected of having links with terrorists. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |