A 29-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker
was arrested for suspected terrorism Monday in an operation
hailed by Interior Minister Marco Minniti.
Hussein Abs Hamir is suspected of spreading pro-ISIS
propaganda and instigating some inmates of the SPRAR
asylum-seeker reception centre in Crotone to join the so-called
Islamic State and carry out acts of violence.
"There's no need to go to Iraq or Syria to wage jihad," he
says in a wiretap, "you can stay in Italy to redeem the
unfaithful, whose throats must be cut".
Police found photos of police stations and police officers on
his phone.
"The system of prevention worked," said Minister Minniti,
congratulating Calabrian police and prosecutors who worked on
the case.
Catanzaro Chief Prosecutor Nicola Gratteri said "we had to
intervene because we believed the suspect posed a concrete
flight risk.
"We were afraid, as has already happened on other occasions,
that the subject might leave Calabria to carry out a terrorist
attack".
Gratteri called the probe that led to Hamir's arrest "an
important investigation, the fruit of the incessant and careful
work of the DIGOS security police in Crotone, of assistant
prosecutor Giovanni Bombardieri and prosecutor Paolo
Petrolo.
Gratteri said "we constantly monitored his movements and
contacts, we saw him exult at the Machester attack on May 22.
"His radicalisation had become increasingly dangerous," said
the Catanzaro chief prosecutor, one of Italy's top anti-mafia
and anti-terror investigators.
Prosecutor Bombardieri said "the evidence gathered showed
that the suspect spread propaganda for ISIS not only in the
SPRAR centre he was hosted by but also by trying to infiltrate
the Crotone mosque".
He said Hamir came to Europe in 2008, first in Norway, then
Finland, Germany and Denmark, before finally coming to Italy in
2012, landing on the coats of Puglia and putting in an asylum
application.
Bombardieri highlighted "two worrying episodes": firstly a
March visit to Rome, in which he "tried to gauge the potential
police response by going around with a white plastic bag; and
secondly the "dangerous" material found on the suspect's
cellphone.
Crotone Police Chief Claudio Sanfilippo described the case as
showing a "dangerous dossier" and he stressed the "enormous
intelligence work that the Crotone anti-terror unit carries out
on a daily basis".
Crotone DIGOS chief Francesco Meduri said Hamir was "a highly
dangerous and violent subject, who always carried on him a
box-cutter and sometimes threatened other SPRAR inmates because
in his view they were not following the precepts of Islam".
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