Italian authorities arrest two suspected Islamic State recruiters

Italian authorities have arrested two men suspected of carrying out online recruitment activities on behalf of the Islamist terror group Islamic State, in yet another sign of the heightened security alert across Europe following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

The counter-terrorism operation, co-ordinated by the Milan prosecutor’s office, took place in the early hours of Tuesday. The two men whose names were not released by authorities, were an Egyptian citizen aged 49 and a naturalised Italian of Egyptian origin, aged 44, who had been active on social media to try to find recruits for the jihadist group also known as Isis.

Giuseppe Petronzi, head of police in Milan, said the authorities had decided to detain the two men now given the “particularly sensitive international context”, with the risks that Islamist extremists could be inspired to emulate terrorist attacks carried out elsewhere.

The arrest comes just a day after a gunman of Tunisian origin who claimed to be an Islamic State member shot and killed two Swedish football fans in Brussels in what Belgium’s prime minister Alexander de Croo has described as a “brutal terrorist attack”.

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The two suspects in Italy were charged with being Islamic State members and are suspected of financing propaganda and support initiatives for the jihadist group, the prosecutor’s office said.

Milan prosecutor Marcello Viola said the men had been under investigation since August 2021. One had taken an oath of allegiance to Isis one year ago, and posted it on Facebook. Both were part of jihadi WhatsApp groups linked to the terror group. They knew each other and had been in Italy since 2008 and 2001, respectively.

Officials said the two were involved in “the glorification of terrorist actions” and used social media to advise others on how to handle weapons. They were sending torrents of messages attempting to recruit susceptible young people to take up the fight for Islamic State.

“There were continuous exchanges of messages ... their goal was one: to bring anyone who came in contact with them closer to the world of [Islamic State] and to participate in any kind of initiative,” said Daniele Calenda, director of the Italian police’s special investigations unit.

Authorities did not say that the two were planning any imminent attack in Italy, but said that their threats to Italian government institutions had come from their social media accounts.

Like other European countries, Italy has been on heightened alert and stepped up security in sensitive sites across the country since Hamas attacked Israel earlier this month. Foreign minister Antonio Tajani said that there were “no imminent threats”. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023