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| Europe |
| Terrorist attacks set to hit Italy before elections |
| 2006-04-07 |
| Italian authorities have thwarted terror plots against a church in Bologna and Milan's subway, the interior minister said yesterday, and a newspaper reported that the attacks were timed to happen before next week's elections. "There was a terrorist plot that was to be carried out in our country and the monitoring and prevention action of our forces allowed us to thwart it," said Giuseppe Pisanu. The plot involved seven people: three who had been expelled from Italy, two under arrest, one under surveillance and one at large, said Pisanu, speaking in Sardinia before the general elections on April 9 and 10. Italians will be voting in national elections for the first time since the September 11 attacks in the United States. Bombings in Spain and Britain raised fears that Italy could also be targeted by Islamic terrorism because the country is part of the US-led coalition in Iraq. The San Petronio basilica in Bologna, which was among the planned targets of the alleged plot, contains a fifteenth-century fresco Muslim groups have interpreted as insulting to Islam. Police arrested four Moroccans and an Italian at the basilica in 2002 and accused them of planning an attack there. The charges were later dropped. The daily Corriere della Sera reported that the alleged plotters aimed to carry out the attacks before the elections. The investigation stemmed from the arrest last month in Morocco of a Tunisian who lives in Milan, Corriere said. The man told investigators about the plan and Pisanu ordered the expulsions last week. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 Suddenly, I got nothin' to say. |
| Posted by: Yusef Islam 2006-04-07 05:06 |