Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

LIBYA

Isis terrorists ‘coming to Italy within weeks’

The information minister for Libya’s Tobruk government has warned that terrorists from the Islamic extremist group, Isis, will be heading to Italy “in the coming weeks”.

Published: 13 May 2015 09:13 CEST

Isis terrorists 'coming to Italy within weeks'

Alleged Isis militants stand next to an Isis flag atop a hill in the Syrian town of Ain al-Arab. Photo: Aris Messinis/AFP

Omar al Gawari told Ansa that the militants will hide themselves on migrant boats.

Italy, and Rome in particular, has been a target for the militants for some time.

Several threats against the capital, the centre of the Catholic Church, have been made by the group.

“In the coming weeks, Italy will experience the arrival not only of poor African immigrants but also of boats carrying Daesh (Isis),” al Gawari, who represents the country's internationally-recognized government based in the port city of Tobruk, told the Italian news agency, adding that Malta will also be affected.

Thousands of migrants have landed in both countries in recent weeks, with people smugglers taking advantage of the chaos gripping Libya since the 2011 uprising that toppled dictator Moamer Qaddafi.

Italy's Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said in February there was a serious danger of Isis fighters forging an alliance with local militias or criminal gangs engaged in a multi-sided battle for control of the north African country, which lies just 175km from the Italy's southernmost island of Lampedusa.

Read more: Could Isis terrorists really invade Italy?

The EU on Monday called on the UN Security Council to back a proposal to use military force to destroy people smugglers' boats.

Ex-jihadi housewife jailed in Norway for joining IS

The Kurdish-run al-Hol camp which holds suspected relatives of Islamic State fighters.Photo: Delil SOULEIMAN / AFP

The Oslo court sentenced the Norwegian-Pakistani woman to three and a half years in prison for “participating in a terrorist organisation” by taking care of her household and enabling her three husbands to fight.

“By travelling to an area controlled by IS in Syria… by moving in and living with her husbands, taking care of the children and various tasks at home, the defendant enabled her three husbands to actively participate in IS fighting,” judge Ingmar Nilsen said as he read out the verdict.

Being a housewife to three successive husbands did not render her a passive bystander, the judge said.

“On the contrary, she was a supporter who enabled the jihad, looked after her three husbands at home and raised the new generation of IS recruits,” he said.

The young woman, who admitted having “radical ideas” at the time, left for Syria in early 2013 to join an Islamist fighter, Bastian Vasquez, who was fighting the regime.

Although she did not take up arms herself, she was accused of having allowed her husbands to go fight while taking care of her two children and household chores.

The trial was the first prosecution in Norway of someone who had returned after joining IS.

“This is a special case,” prosecutor Geir Evanger acknowledged during the trial.

“This is the first time that, to put it bluntly, someone has been charged for being a wife and mother.”

The prosecution had called for a four-year sentence, while the defence had called for her acquittal and immediately appealed Tuesday’s verdict.

The woman’s lawyer, Nils Christian Nordhus, argued that his client had quickly wanted to leave Syria after being subjected to domestic violence.

She had also been a victim of human trafficking because she had been held against her will, he added.

But the judge stressed that she had participated in the organisation “knowingly” and of her own will.

The woman was repatriated to Norway in early 2020 on humanitarian grounds with her two children, including a young boy described as seriously ill.

At least four other Norwegian women and their children are being held in Kurdish-controlled camps in Syria.

Url copied to clipboard!