Bari prosecutors on Tuesday
requested a fast-track trial for an Iraqi national who is a
terror suspect accused of abetting illegal immigration into
Italy.
Majid Muhamad, 45, was arrested in December on charges of
abetting illegal immigration as part of an international
terrorism probe into at least 10 suspects.
Muhamad is thought to have helped people linked to an
Italian cell of an Islamist terror group and "aiding the
entry into Europe of people linked to Islamist fundamentalist
combatant circles," police sources said at the time of his
arrest.
He allegedly organized the illegal entry into Italy of
numerous foreigners using fake documents including 11 people
from Egypt, Iran, Morocco, Pakistan, and Turkey whom he helped
find accommodation in Bari between March and September last
year, investigators said.
Muhamad had been released from an Italian prison in January
2015 after serving 10 years for international terrorism, and
moved to Bari after winning an appeal against an expulsion
order.
Wiretaps revealed he subsequently had telephone contact
with numerous people believed to be linked to an Islamist
terrorist group, and used what police believe to be code for
explosives when he spoke of two kilos of "truffles" his wife
sent him from Iraq.
During a February 2015 raid on a Bari apartment, police
confiscated from Majid postcards he sent from prison in which he
exalted the jihad, or Islamist holy war.
The suspect, who has been transferred to a maximum security
prison near the town of Rossano in Calabria, will be tried on
the illegal immigration charges beginning in April and is still
under investigation on separate international terrorism charges.
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