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Join on Telegram Rabat – Italian police arrested a Moroccan resident and an Italian individual who converted to Islam, on Wednesday. Police described them as “lone wolves” suspected of planning to join ISIS.
The two suspects, 25-year-old Giuseppe Frittitta and 18-year-old Ossama Gafhir met on the internet, according to Italian news agency ANSA.
Police made the arrests on orders from the Sicilian prosecutor general. The suspects were undergoing “stringent drills” and had posted photos on social media disseminating extremist propaganda.
One picture shows the Italian suspect posing with a 26-centimeter knife calling for the death of all Westerners.
Gafhir allegedly lured the Sicilian suspect into extremism, who later changed his name to Yusuf. Frittitta, whom the police captured in northern Italy, was in touch with extremists in Italy and elsewhere.
In mid-March, Italy deported a Moroccan imam, Houssam Din Rouzak, for allegedly showing extremist behaviour as well as propagating extremist interpretations of Qur’anic precepts in sermons, according to the Italian news outlet La Voce.
Italian intelligence services had kept a close watch on Din Rouzak since 2012, when he adopted a rigid understanding of the Qur’an and showed an “aggressive attitude” towards colleagues at the Center of Islamic Studies in the northwestern Italian city of Novara.
