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POLICE

Italy pursues ten suspects on terrorist financing charges

Italy has issued arrest warrants for 10 people, including an imam, suspected of financing terrorism, prosecutors said Saturday.

Italy pursues ten suspects on terrorist financing charges

The eight Tunisians and two Italians are suspected of having set up false bank accounts and businesses to move large sums of money and avoid taxes, said the prosecutors' office in Aquila in the central Abruzzo region.

The iman being sought was based in the city of Teramo in the same region, the statement added.

The money “also financed activities linked to the radical Al-Nusra organisation” formerly the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda, prosecutors said.

And some of the money was earmarked for imams in Italy, “including one convicted for association with a group linked to international terrorism”.

Prosecutors have already seized more than a million euros ($1.1 million) in money, property and other assets belonging to one of the 10 suspects, an Italian accountant, said prosecutors.

Investigators later told journalists that a Tunisian living in Turin, northern Italy, was believed to be the ringleader.

He owned companies involved in construction and the carpet trade.

“We have reasonable cause to believe that the group… created secret funds that were transferred to Turkey, where they financed the departure of aspiring terrorists to Syria,” Aquila prosecutor Michele Ranzo told journalists.

Pasquale Angelosanto, a general in the para-military carabinieri police force, added: “In many recorded telephone conversations, the suspects spoke about Syria and Iraq, referring to an Al-Nusra unit towards which it directed aspiring fighters;”

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PROTESTS

Clashes mar rally against far right in north-west France

Riot police clashed with demonstrators in the north-western French city of Rennes on Thursday in the latest rally against the rise of the far-right ahead of a national election this month.

Clashes mar rally against far right in north-west France

The rally ended after dozens of young demonstrators threw bottles and other projectiles at police, who responded with tear gas.

The regional prefecture said seven arrests were made among about 80 people who took positions in front of the march through the city centre.

The rally was called by unions opposed to Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National party (RN), which is tipped to make major gains in France’s looming legislative elections. The first round of voting is on June 30.

“We express our absolute opposition to reactionary, racist and anti-Semitic ideas and to those who carry them. There is historically a blood division between them and us,” Fabrice Le Restif, regional head of the FO union, one of the organisers of the rally, told AFP.

Political tensions have been heightened by the rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl in a Paris suburb, for which two 13-year-old boys have been charged. The RN has been among political parties to condemn the assault.

Several hundred people protested against anti-Semitism and ‘rape culture’ in Paris in the latest reaction.

Dominique Sopo, president of anti-racist group SOS Racisme, said it was “an anti-Semitic crime that chills our blood”.

Hundreds had already protested on Wednesday in Paris and Lyon amid widespread outrage over the assault.

The girl told police three boys aged between 12 and 13 approached her in a park near her home in the Paris suburb of Courbevoie on Saturday, police sources said.

She was dragged into a shed where the suspects beat and raped her, “while uttering death threats and anti-Semitic remarks”, one police source told AFP.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country outside Israel and the United States.

At Thursday’s protest, Arie Alimi, a lawyer known for tackling police brutality and vice-president of the French Human Rights League, said voters had to prevent the far-right from seizing power and “installing a racist, anti-Semitic and sexist policy”.

But he also said he was sad to hear, “anti-Semitic remarks from a part of those who say they are on the left”.

President Emmanuel Macron called the elections after the far-right thrashed his centrist alliance in European Union polls. The far-right and left-wing groups have accused each other of being anti-Semitic.

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