Carabinieri Gen. Giuseppe Governale told RAI state radio Thursday that the operation involved investigations in Britannia, Norway, Finland, Germany and Switzerland
...home of the Helvetians, famous for cheese, watches, yodeling, and William Tell...
. The ANSA news agency said the suspects are accused of international terrorism association. A news conference is being held later in the day with Italia's top anti-terrorism officials
Norway's security service PST, meanwhile, told Norwegian media that a tossed in the slammer
Book 'im, Mahmoud!
Iraqi-born holy man and two others have been jugged
You have the right to remain silent...
on suspicion of their involvement in a terror plot in Italia.
PST spokeswoman Siv Alsen said Najmaddin Faraj Ahmad, known as Mullah Krekar, and two others whom she didn't name, face a court hearing Friday in Oslo, Norway, pending a possible deportation to Italia.
Last month, Ahmad was sentenced to 18 months in jail for praising the slaying of cartoonists at the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo
...
A lefty French satirical magazine, home of what may well be the majority if the active testicles left in Europe..., which had lampooned Islam and other religions. He was also found guilty of urging others to kill a Kurdish immigrant in Norway in the same interview with Norwegian broadcaster NRK.
Earlier this year, Ahmad was freed after nearly three years' imprisonment for making death threats. The 59-year-old Kurd, who came to Norway as a refugee in 1991, was convicted in 2005 for a similar offense.
Norway and the United States have accused Ahmad of financing a defunct Iraqi Sunni Lion of Islam group called Ansar al-Islam. It reportedly merged with the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group last year.
Speaking from Valettta, Malta, where she took part in the European Union
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
meeting on the migrant crisis, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg said "if this means that Krekar leaves Norway, that's fine."
| An Nahar adds: |
Seventeen people were targeted in the raids across Europe -- 16 Kurds and a Kosovan. Six of them have been arrested in Italy, four in Britain and three in Norway.
Several members of the group have traveled to Iraq and Syria to fight for the Islamic State group, police said.
Investigators said the network was trying to free Norway-based fundamentalist preacher Najmuddin Ahmad Faraj -- also known as Mullah Krekar -- who is listed as a terrorist by the United States and United Nations.
The network developed "on the 'dark web', little-known (Internet) platforms that we have managed to penetrate," Giovanni Governale of the Italian police's Special Operations Group said, adding that the swoop has allowed police to scupper "a process of recruitment, of sending (fighters) into combat abroad".
Governale said the network "was about to continue sending many other jihadists abroad; it was about to carry out attacks, including suicide bombings, to try to free their chief, Mullah Krekar".
The 59-year-old, a Kurdish Iraqi, has been living in Norway since 1991.
He has been at risk of deportation since 2003 after Norwegian authorities ordered him to be expelled as a threat to national security.
While courts have upheld the ruling, Norwegian law bars him from being deported to Iraq, where he risks the death penalty.
Krekar also founded the radical Islamist group Ansar al-Islam, but insists he has not led it since 2002.