ITALY MUSLIM CLERIC HATE!

 

Italian court upholds 12-year sentence for Kurdish Islamist cleric

 

Wladimir van Wilgenburg 

July 11-2020  

 

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – An Italian appeals court on Friday upheld all the convictions in the trial of suspected members of a so-called Jihadi cell, including its leader, Mullah Krekar, the Italian news agency Associated Press National Agency (ANSA) reported on Friday.

 

ANSA reported that the court upheld the Kurdish Islamist cleric's 12-year prison term and convicted him of being the "spiritual leader" of the Rawti Shax ("toward the mountain" in Kurdish) terror cell, which was dismantled by Italian police in the autumn of 2015. Sentences for five other cell members were also reportedly upheld.

 

Dr. Francesco Marone, a Research Fellow for the Center on Radicalization and International Terrorism at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI), described the group's operations in an interview with Kurdistan 24 on Saturday.

 

"Italian investigators have argued that 'Mullah Krekar' was the leader of extremist network Rawti Shax, worthy of note because, among other things, it was a rather large transnational network and spread across different countries," Dr. Marone said.

 

The expert stated further that the group was "involved in the recruitment of radicals and foreign fighters who sought to travel to Syria and Iraq in order to fight."

 

"According to an original report on Italy's foreign fighters I co-authored based on exclusive government information, at least one foreign fighter (a Kosovar man, named Eldin Hodza) had close ties to the Rawti Shax. Hodza (born 1988) left for Syria from eastern Italy in January 2014 with the financial help of the Rawti Shax," Marone added.

 

Italian media reports suggest Italian investigators believe that the group had links to the so-called Islamic State.

 

According to a profile of the group by the Terrorism Research Analysis Consortium (TRAC), Rawti Shax claimed it aimed "to overthrow the Iraqi Kurdish regional government and replace it with a caliphate ruled by Shariah law."

 

In November 2015, the Italian police dismantled a cell of 17 individuals (16 Kurds and 1 Kosovar) linked to the group spread between Norway, the UK, Finland, and Italy, with seven members arrested in the latter.

 

"The Internet helped their transnational contacts. They also set up online and offline jihadist educational activities in Italy. According to Italian investigators, they were reportedly ready to plot attacks, but not in Italy," Dr. Marone said.

 

Krekar is the former leader of the extremist Islamist Ansar al-Islam group that the US targeted during its liberation of Iraq in 2003. Both the United Nations and the US consider him a terrorist.

 

Krekar, 63, has lived in Norway since 1991. The Scandinavian nation has been unable to legally deport him to Iraq due to fears he might face the death penalty.

 

He was jailed several times for death threats in 2012 and for praising the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris, France, in 2015.

 

However, in March 2020, Mullah Krekar was extradited from Norway to Italy to face trial. A Bolzano court sentenced Mullah Krekar and his followers to prison in July 2019.

 

Now he is reportedly held in the high-security prison of Sassari, Sardinia.

 

"This week the Court of Appeals in Bolzano upheld all the sentences. Generally speaking, this case confirms the tough position of Italian authorities on jihadism," Dr. Marone concluded.

 

 

Italy to Deport Imam Who Beat Children at Religious School

 

CHRIS TOMLINSON

23 Nov 2019

Breitbart

 

A 23-year-old Bangladeshi imam faces deportation from Italy after investigators confirmed he had physically assaulted young children at a religious school.

 

The migrant, who lived in Italy on a work visa, is said to have created what investigators described as a “climate of terror” at a Quranic school in Padua and engaged in humiliating young pupils and physically assaulting them, sometimes with a stick, Il Giornale reports.

 

The beatings of the children, who were aged between five and ten years old, took place at the Bangladesh Cultural Centre in the Arcella district of Padua. Investigators noted that the 23-year-old would engage in physical violence against the children for as little as a wrong answer or catching them being distracted.

 

Agents of the General Investigations and Special Operations Division (DIGOS), which investigated the case, also found photographs and posts of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and proposed that he may have also been teaching the young children antisemitic ideas.

 

Italy has deported several radical imams in recent years, including a Tunisian earlier this year who came into the country illegally and declared to police that he would not only kill them but he would eat their corpses as well.

 

Last year, another Tunisian imam was expelled from the country after it was found that he celebrated the Berlin Christmas market terror attack from his prison cell. The imam was already in prison for robbery and drug dealing. 

 

The former Italian coalition government of populist Matteo Salvini’s League and the Five Star Movement (M5S) led all of Europe last year for deportations of radical Islamists. Both illegal immigration and prison radicalisation have led to a growth in the number of jihadists in the country.

 

Professor Paolo Branca, Islamologist at the Catholic University of Milan, has even claimed that some jihadists get arrested on purpose in order to be able to preach and radicalise others behind bars.

 

 

Islamic cell funding radical imams uncovered in Italy

 

“God blessed his soul,” Jameleddine B. Brahim Kharroubi said speaking of former Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.

 

By ROSSELLA TERCATIN   

SEPTEMBER 8, 2019

Jerusalem Post

 

Ten people were arrested in the Italian regions of Piemonte and Abruzzo on charges of terrorism, money laundering and covert financing, Italian daily La Stampa reported on Sunday. 

 

Through tax evasion, Jameleddine B. Brahim Kharroubi, a small business owner of Tunisian origin, accumulated about two million euros to fund radical imams in Italy and abroad.

 

The report highlighted that Brahim Kharroubi and the uncovered Islamic cell had ties with Al Nusra, the Al Qaeda branch active in Syria.

 

“God blessed his soul,” Brahim Kharroubi said speaking of former Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in a 2016 conversation tapped by Italian security forces. In other discussions, the man praised Al Nusra and Islamic fighters “ready to martyrdom,” and expressed his support for the 2015 terror attacks in Paris. He also worked to recruit foreign fighters to send to Syria.

 

According to La Stampa, the 57-year-old had been monitored by several intelligence agencies for his financial ties with radical Islamic organizations for several years. He was included in the Europol database and  Terrorist Finance Tracking Program as a member of a network devoted to transfer covert funds to Morocco since 2005. In 2005, Brahim Kharroubi served as the treasurer of an Islamic association in Turin promoting interfaith dialogue. 

 

Along with Brahim Kharroubi, Italian police forces arrested among others Atem Argoubi, an imam serving in a mosque in the Abruzzo region. 

 

 

Imam Deported from Italy After Celebrating Terror Attacks in Prison


22 Sep 2018

Breibart

A Tunisian imam has been expelled from Italy after it was revealed that he had celebrated the Berlin Christmas Market terror attack in December of 2016 from his prison cell.


The 32-year-old imam, who had been convicted of robbery and drug dealing, was serving his sentence at the Rebibbia prison in Rome where he praised Islamic State and terrorist acts, Il Giornale reports.


One of the attacks the imam celebrated was the 2016 Berlin Christmas Market attack in which fellow Tunisian Anis Amri used a truck to run over multiple innocent people, killing a dozen and injuring 56 others. After the attack, it was revealed that Amri was said to have been radicalised in an Italian prison.


The imam was also said to have been spreading radical Islamic radical ideology among the prisoners and was said to be ready to imitate the deeds of Amri and commit a terror attack.


The expulsion order came after the 32-year-old had served his prison sentence and was set for release on August 22nd. Instead of being released, he was transferred to a repatriation centre along with three Egyptian nationals who were considered threats to Italian national security.


All four men were put on a direct flight from Rome to Cairo on Wednesday afternoon.


The case is just the latest example of the presence of radical Islam in European prisons, with the problem being a major issue in France.


Last year, two radical Islamic inmates at Fresnes prison were caught plotting a terror attack that they were to carry out upon their release and investigators also manage to find smuggled phones that allowed the pair to communicate with Islamic State.


Prisons across Europe have been referred to as breeding grounds for Islamic radicalism in a 2016 study released by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR).


In Austria, senior imam Ramazan Demir also spoke out against radicalisation in prisons last November saying: “Prisoners who behave inconspicuously at first mutate into ticking time bombs. Suddenly driven by hatred, they speak of wanting to commit murders.”


His comments came after radical Islamic literature was discovered at Korneuburg prison a month beforehand.



Italy expels Muslim cleric who refused to accept gender parity


08/09/2016
About Croatia


A Moroccan man who served as a "stand-in imam" in a mosque in northern Italy was forcibly repatriated home because he refused to accept Italian constitutional rights such as gender parity, Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said Thursday.


Following the Charlie Hebdo Islamist attacks in Paris in January 2015, Italy adopted legislation making it easier for police to arrest or expel suspected terrorists. Since then, 115 have been sent home, including 12 imams, Alfano said in a statement.

The latest case concerns a 33-year-old who acted as secretary of the Muslim Community of Treviso, an industrial town in north-east Italy about 40 kilometres north of Venice. He was put on a plane to Casablanca late on Wednesday, the minister said.


The decision was taken because the man refused to swear on the constitution before taking up Italian citizenship, arguing that his ultra-conservative Salafist Islam beliefs were "fully incompatible" with Italy's fundamental laws.


He denounced Italian laws as "'a collection of sins upon sins' such as, for example, parity between men and women," Alfano said.


The minister has for weeks been publicizing an anti-radicalization campaign for Muslim preachers, which should lead to new rules requiring them to study Italian rules and customs and deliver their sermons in Italian.


"We are working to create a new model of imam, which we could call 'Italian imam,'" Alfano told the Libero newspaper in July, expressing concern that current Muslim clerics in Italy are all foreign-trained "and therefore have different values from us and sometimes radical inclinations."

 

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