Roundup: Moroccan linked to Tunis attack arrested in Italy

A Moroccan suspected of having planned the deadly attack in a Tunis museum has been arrested near here, local police told a press conference on Wednesday.

Touil Abdelmajid, 22, was living in an apartment in the town of Gaggiano, southwest of Milan, with his mother and two elder brothers. He is now being held in jail pending an extradition request from Tunisia.

The Moroccan, without a criminal record, was wanted at the international level by Tunisian authorities who suspect him of having planned and taken part in the attack against the Bardo museum on March 18.

In the attack, carried out by a group of Islamic militants, 22 people were killed and nearly 50 others wounded. Many were foreign tourists.

Police told the press conference the young man had originally reached Sicily on a migrant boat along with around 90 migrants in February, and had then been issued an expulsion order.

Illegal immigration from North Africa has become a national emergency in Italy, which has had to cope with countless arrivals.

The issue of whether Islamist terrorists could be among the thousands of desperate migrants seeking safer shores has become a heated political theme in Italy, with many criticizing the government's immigration policies.

"For months we had warned that the terrorists could reach Italy onboard the migrant boats, but our words were seen as a joke. Now the first one has arrived, which means hundreds of them can do the same by hiding themselves among those desperate people," Renato Brunetta, the leader of the center-right Forza Italia (FI) party, told Xinhua.

"Security must be put at the center of the government's migration policies," he went on saying.

In Brunetta's view, the crime of illegal immigration that was abolished last year should be reintroduced, while the migrant flows should be stopped.

"The illegal migrants must be blocked before they are boarded in Libya and this can be done through agreements with the local authorities," Brunetta told Xinhua.

More than 33,000 migrants have reached the country so far this year, which means that as many as 200,000 could land in Italy for 2015 overall, well above last year's 170,000, according to sources from the Italian interior ministry. Endit