Prosecutors ask fast-track trial for Iraqi terror suspect

(ANSA) - Bari, February 23 - 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.