Two Moroccans arrested in Italy yesterday wanted to blow up the Milan Cathedral on Christmas. They hoped an attack during the busy holiday would cost dozens of lives. This according to tapped phone calls, reports La Repubblica.
The two belonged to an Islamic terror cell which had been followed by the Italian police already for months. "The plot was discovered yet before the suspects could get explosives," says the Italian minister of Internal Affairs, Roberto Maroni, in response.
Rachid Ilhami (31) and Abdelkader Ghafir (43) were arrested in Giussano, a city 25km away from Milan. The detectives gathered from tapped phone calls and confiscated computer files that the two also prepared attacks on a supermarket and a police bureau. They are arrested on suspicion of terrorism and eventual cooperation with al-Qaeda.
Ilhami had been living since he was ten in Italy. He is married and has two children. He worked as a blacksmith and in his free time worked in a center for peace activities, in the area of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's villa, according to Corriere della Sera.
Source: HLN (Dutch)
Ilhami is not the first 'peace activist' to plan terror attacks.
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