A second brother of a London bombing suspect jailed in Rome was arrested Sunday as investigators pressed their search for possible accomplices to the July 21 attackers. A top security official warned that the terror risk for the Italian capital remained high. Fati Issac was arrested in the northern industrial city of Brescia, national police said. He is a brother of Osman Hussain, a Briton also known as Hamdi Issac, who is accused of trying to bomb a London subway. His lawyer said Sunday that Hussain did not intend to kill anyone but only to attract attention.Hussain was arrested Friday at the Rome apartment of a different brother after eluding a dragnet in England. That brother, Remzi Issac, also was arrested Friday. Fati Issac is accused of destroying or hiding documents sought by investigators, but the charge does not involve terrorism, the Italian news agency ANSA said. Anti-terrorism investigators interrogated him for hours, ANSA and SKY TG24 said, reporting from Brescia. Police are trying to determine whether Hussain was involved in any terrorist cell in Italy or involved in any plot to launch an attack against Italy.
Hussain's support network "confirms the presence in our country of autonomous Islamic cells, difficult to discover, which could represent a concrete threat," top Interior Ministry official Alfredo Mantovano said. Italian investigators have said for years that Italy is an important logistical base for terrorist groups, especially in procuring false travel and identity documents.