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Terrorism risks high from immigration to Italy: FM

Xinhua, January 23, 2015 Adjust font size:

Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said on Thursday the risk of acts of terrorism from illegal immigration to Italy was high amid reports that several suspected foreign nationals have been expelled from the country in recent days.

"There are risks of infiltration, also remarkable, from immigration," Gentiloni was quoted as saying by ANSA news agency while taking part in a security summit in London.

Waves of thousands of boat migrants have arrived in Italy from North African and Middles Eastern countries in recent months.

"Fortunately, our security systems are alerted and function well, but this does not allow us to remotely reduce the alert degree," Gentiloni added.

In fact the country has raised the terror threat alert level, has strengthened frontier control offices and expelled several extremists in recent weeks, Interior Minister Angelino Alfano told a recent press conference.

On Thursday, an Albanian national was reportedly arrested at Catania airport, in the island region of Sicily, after police found him in possession of fake identity documents and pictures of him holding a Kalashnikov automatic rifle.

The 30-year-old man had already been reported to authorities after he tried to board a London-bound flight from Milan Malpensa airport, also with false documents, earlier this month.

A 22-year-old Kosovan living near the northern city of Cremona was also ejected from Italy after he exalted terror attacks.

In his words posted on social networks, the young man named Resim Kastrati said he was willing to carry out "extreme acts" to defend the honor of Prophet Mohammed, Cremona-based La provincia di Cremona newspaper said earlier this week.

The same thing happened to a Turkish graduate student at the renowned Scuola Normale university in Pisa, 25-year-old Furkan Semih Dundar, who was reported by Corriere della Sera national newspaper to have threatened institutions saying in emails that he wanted to blow up an embassy.

According to recent reports of Milan-based Il Giornale newspaper, a Jihadist manual written in Arabic was seized in the apartment of a jailed Tunisian national in Milan. The text exalted martyrdom and called on Muslims to "disseminate terror among the enemies of Allah."

The center-left government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has announced that tougher anti-terrorism measures will be introduced over the next days in the wake of the shootings that killed 17 people in France earlier this month. Endit