The suspect, named by Ansa as 23-year-old Elmahdi Halili, was detained in the north-western city on suspicion of "participating in the terrorist association Islamic State [Isis]".

The Moroccan-Italian is said to be the author of the first piece of Italian-language Isis propaganda.

READ ALSO: Italian anti-terror police arrest man accused of links to Isis

Police believe he hoped to organize attacks in Italy using trucks and knives, and may have tried to recruit "lone wolves" to carry them out.

"It was time to intervene. We couldn't afford to wait until he identified a target to strike," said the head of Turin's special operations police squad, Carlo Ambra.

Halili is known to have contacted a number of people, both Italians and foreign nationals, some of them already known to police, in what investigators believe was an attempt to recruit them for acts of terrorism.



A police handout of Elmahdi Halili. Photo: Polizia di Stato/AFP

Police conducted a total of 13 searches as part of Wednesday's operation, raiding premises in Milan, Bergamo, Modena, Reggio Emilia and Naples.

Several other people are reported to be under investigation, accused of attempting to radicalize others online.

Halili has already been convicted of terror-related charges once before, in 2015, when he was found to have published Isis texts on the internet.

He was sentenced to two years in prison as part of a plea deal. After his release police found that he continued to publish material glorifying terrorist acts, including videos of Isis violence and its militants in Syria and Iraq, as well as playlists of speeches by infamous radical Islamists.

"He's a highly motivated individual with no intention of reforming," Ambra said.

As officers led him away on Wednesday, he reportedly shouted: "Tyrants! I'm going to prison with my head held high."

READ ALSO: Rome tightens security for Easter amid false terror alerts

His arrest comes the day after a separate operation that saw an Egyptian-Italian man detained in the southern city of Foggia, where he was accused of attempting to indoctrinate youngsters at a Muslim cultural centre.

Police are also investigating a teacher from the city now working in Ferrara, an Italian citizen who converted to Islam and who is believed to have been in contact with the man arrested, it was reported on Wednesday.

Though neither man arrested this week was in Italy illegally and both are Italian citizens, the leader of the populist right League party, Matteo Salvini, called on Wednesday for tighter controls of Italy's borders and an immediate halt to migrant arrivals by sea.

He referred to comments from the European border agency Frontex, which said this week that unregulated crossings from North Africa into Europe raised security concerns, amid a level of terrorist threat that remains high.

READ ALSO: </s> ROME (Reuters) - Italian anti-terrorism police on Wednesday arrested an Italian citizen of Moroccan origin who they said was an Islamic State sympathizer planning a truck attack.

It was the latest in a series of arrests this month involving suspected supporters of Islamist terrorism and came as Italy stepped up the number of foreigners it expels.

Elmahdi Halili, 23, arrested in the northern city of Turin, “was studying how to prepare a truck for an attack”, Francesco Messina, the city’s police chief said. “He was learning how to use a knife and looking into where and how to attack.”

Assailants in London carried out three vehicle attacks last year. In 2016, militants mowed down scores of people in Nice and Berlin.

Police said Halili received a two-year suspended prison term in 2015 for “instigating terrorism” by running a website praising Islamic State and hailing the attacks it or its supporters perpetrated in Europe.

It was not immediately possible to seek comment from Halili or anyone representing him.

“The terrorist risk is very high,” said Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right League party, which is in talks to form a government after the inconclusive March 4 election.

“We want immediate action, so everyone who crosses our borders by sea or land be monitored and that all (migrant) boat arrivals on our coasts be suspended,” he added. Almost 120,000 boat migrants reached Italy from North Africa last year.

Wednesday’s police operation targeted an undisclosed number of accomplices, both foreign and Italian, some of whom had converted to Islam and were part of “a campaign of radicalization”.

In an interview in Wednesday’s Turin newspaper La Stampa, Interior Minister Marco Minniti said the security threat to Italy from supporters of Islamic State was higher than ever.

He attributed this to more foreign fighters attempting to return to Europe via Italy after Islamic State suffered defeats in Syria and Iraq.

On Tuesday in southern Foggia, police arrested an Egyptian-born man suspected of being an Islamic State member and of indoctrinating children in a cultural center he ran. He encouraged them to kill non-Muslims, police said.

On March 15, police acting on a tip from the U.S. FBI arrested a man of Latvian origin who they said had been preparing pipe bombs. A judge’s detention order said the man had been considering an attack on a kindergarten.

In recent months, Italy has stepped up expulsions of foreigners believed to be a threat to national security. So far this year, 29 have been expelled, most of them Muslims, compared with 132 for all of 2017. </s> Rome (AFP) - Italian police Thursday arrested five people as part of an anti-terror raid linked to a Tunisian who staged a deadly attack on a Berlin Christmas market in 2016, Italian media reported.

Anis Amri, a rejected asylum seeker, had rammed a stolen truck into the crowded square, killing 12 people and wounding about 100 others.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack on December 19, 2016 -- its deadliest ever carried out in Germany.

Amri, who had previously lived in Italy, was killed four days after the assault by police in a Milan suburb.

The five detained Thursday morning are accused of activities linked to "international terrorism" and procuring false documents for migrants, the Italian AGI news agency reported.

The suspects included a Tunisian national from the city of Latina, south of Rome, who had allegedly planned to provide Amri with fake identity papers to help him flee abroad, investigators told AGI.

The raids were carried out in several cities including Rome, Latina, and Naples.

Amri, who was 24 when he was shot dead by police, landed on the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa in 2011 and spent four years in prison in Sicily for burning down a school.

In the aftermath of the Berlin attack, Italian police raided several homes where Amri had reportedly stayed in 2015 in an agricultural region southeast of Rome.

The press reported that he had spent several weeks in Aprilia, about 40 kilometres south of the Italian capital, with a fellow Tunisian whom he met in Lampedusa.

At the time, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni ruled out the existence of "networks" supporting Amri in Italy, but judicial authorities said that the country's criminal underbelly often provided logistical support to European terrorists.

Following the deadly market attack, German police faced fierce criticism when it emerged that Amri -- who had been in Germany since 2015 and was registered under several different identities -- should have been deported.

On Wednesday, Italian police also arrested a 23-year-old Italian with Moroccan parents, Halili Elmahdi, in the northeastern city of Turin.

Police said Elmahdi showed alarming signs of radicalisation and was promoting Islamist extremism on social networks.

During a raid at his home, security forces uncovered manuals indicating how to kill someone with a knife and instructions for installing a bomb on board a truck.

The homes of 13 of Elmahdi's contacts were searched on the same day in several Italian cities.

Elmahdi is suspected of seeking to recruit Muslim "lone wolves" in Italy to commit attacks.

Prosecutors said that the 23-year-old, who was under surveillance after being arrested in 2015 on charges of glorifying terrorism, may have been ready to commit acts of terror because of his radicalisation. </s> ROME (Reuters) - Italy on Thursday arrested five men in an operation against suspected supporters of Islamist terrorism, police said, after tracing the phone contacts of the Berlin truck attacker shot in Milan in late 2016.

Suspected supporters of Islamist terrorism are seen in this picture released by Italian Police in Rome, Italy, March 29, 2018. Italian Police press office/Handout via Reuters

Four of the men, all Tunisians, were arrested on suspicion of conspiring to aid illegal immigration, while a fifth man, who is also believed to be Tunisian, was picked up for allegedly plotting militant attacks, prosecutor Sergio Colaiocco said.

While the suspects played no part in the December 2016 truck attack in Berlin that killed 12 people, police discovered them by following the telephone records of Anis Amri, the Tunisian man shot dead near Milan four days after the assault on the Christmas market.

“No link at all has been found” between the men and the Berlin attack, said Walter Dian, an anti-terrorism police official from Latina, a city south of the capital.

Instead, police said Amri may have been heading south to acquire false documents from them.

Amri was brought to Italy after being rescued at sea from a migrant boat in February 2011, and he later spent almost four years in prison in Sicily for vandalism, threats and theft. In 2015, he was released and told to leave the country. He went to Germany.

“There’s no concrete evidence that leads us to think a specific attack was planned, but there is enough proof for us to think that this was where things were heading,” Colaiocco told reporters, referring to the man arrested on terrorism charges.

He had consulted the Internet on how to use a missile launcher, and he had looked into the cost of renting a pick-up truck as well, the prosecutor said.

Italy has already expelled other three men tied to Amri on evidence that they had become radicalized Islamists amid a general increase in expulsions over the past year.

As part of their operation, police were carrying out searches in Rome, the southern port city of Naples and the central and southern towns of Latina, Viterbo, Caserta and Matera, investigators said.

Thursday’s sweep is not connected to a series of similar raids this month, police said.

On Wednesday anti-terrorism police arrested an Italian citizen of Moroccan origin who they said was an Islamic State sympathizer planning a possible truck attack.

Interior Minister Marco Minniti said on Wednesday the security threat to Italy from Islamic State supporters was higher than ever because more foreign fighters were attempting to return to Europe via Italy after the jihadist group suffered defeats in Syria and Iraq.

So far this year, 29 foreigners, mostly Muslims, have been expelled from Italy as suspected threats to national security.
Italian counter-terror police arrest Elmahdi Halili on suspicion of planning attacks with knives and lorries, attempting to recruit terrorist attackers, and creating the first piece of Islamic State propaganda in Italian.