A Pisa court of appeals on
Friday acquitted a Moroccan national of charges of instigating
jihad, or Islamist holy war, on Facebook.
The prosecution in the trial that kicked off in February
had requested a prison term of eight years for Jalal El Hanaoui,
26, who lives in the Tuscan town of Ponsacco near Pisa.
The court found there was no case to answer. Prosecutors
said they will appeal today's verdict.
El Hanaoui was picked up in July 2015 after using three
Facebook identities to call for holy war among 12,000 followers,
posting photos of monuments around the world suspected of being
targets for attacks - including the tourist-famed Leaning Tower
of Pisa, the Statue of Liberty, the Cathedral of St Basil in
Moscow and the Israeli wall separating Jerusalem from the rest
of the occupied West Bank.
In posts and chats with two other terror suspects, the
Moroccan proposed creating an Islamic state via massacres,
murders, and other attacks, prosecutors said last summer.
Born in Morocco, El Hanaoui joined relatives in Italy at
age eight and has remained in the country ever since, notching
up a criminal record for drug dealing. He was unemployed at the
time of his arrest.
El Hanaoui has rejected the charges against him and
reportedly explicitly distanced himself from the so-called
Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group and from radical
Islam.
His defence lawyers argued the charges against
him were based solely on "some phrases taken out of context".
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