A Bari court on Monday sentenced
an Iraqi national to three years six months for abetting illegal
immigration.
Muhamad Majid, 45, is also a suspect in an ongoing
international Islamist terrorism investigation.
Today he was found guilty of providing lodging and fake IDs
for dozens of Egyptian, Iranian, Moroccan, Pakistani, and
Turkish nationals in Italy.
The prosecution had requested eight years in prison.
Majid had been arrested December 7, 2015, on charges of
abetting illegal immigration as part of an international
terrorism probe into at least 10 suspects, and was transferred
to a maximum security prison near the southern town of Rossano
Calabro where Italy holds many terror suspects.
Majid is thought to have aided 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 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.
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