Sleeping agents in Italy: Terrorists on standby

By Shaimaa Hefzy

Despite the fact that Italy is one of the countries that are less vulnerable to terrorist attacks on the Global Terrorism Index, it faces a threat of sleeping agents. Over the past four years, Italian authorities announced the arrest of a number of sleeping cells that were plotting terrorist attacks.

Italy has foiled 14 terrorist attacks, ranking number four among the countries that thwarted terrorist plots in 2017. However, it suffers from an increasing number of sleeping agents. For example, Berlin Christmas market attacker Anis Amri, Tunisian national, was a felon at an Sicilian prison. Also, Tunisian terrorist Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, who carried out 2016 Nice attack, had lived in the Italian border city of Ventimiglia.

In May 2018, Italian authorities arrested 11 Syrians and 3 Moroccans over accusations of having links with Islamic State militant group (Daesh) for 2 million euros sent to them in form of bank transfer.  Two month earlier, Italian authorities arrested Abdel Rahman Mohy, an Egyptian-Italian national, over charges of inciting violence and terrorism among children to carry out attacks against non-Muslims. The 59-year-old suspect was a head of an Islamic culture center.

In March 2018, Italy arrested five Tunisians during “an anti-terrorism campaign” targeting  terror suspects. Besides the detention campaigns, Italian authorities accelerate extradition of radical suspects.  For example, In 2017, the authorities extradited more than 100 suspects.

In 2017, the police seized more than 24 million tablets of Tramadol worth 50 million euros before being sold by Daesh militants for getting money to fund their terrorist attacks worldwide, said Attorney General Federico Cafiero in Reggio Calabria. Similarly, another cargo was seized at the Port of Genoa in Italy in May 2017.

For many years, Italy police faced terrorism of Mafias,  gaining a wide experience of surveillance. However,  the real problem for the police boils down to that some terrorists are not part of organized cells like mafias.

Late January, the INTERPOL announced a list of 50 suspects for belonging to Daesh-affiliate in Italy. All suspects are Tunisian, who migrated to Italian city of Sicily via the Mediterranean Sea in July and October 2017. Sicily is considered an Achilles' heel of Italian authorities; the number of Tunisians, who arrived to Sicilian shores last year, reached 4,500 migrants, with an increase of 4 percent in 2016.

Investigators do not rule out that some people loyal to Daesh hide among the travelers to Sicily, said the Public Prosecutor of Agrigento.

In July, INTERPOL issued a similar list of 173 suspects belonging to Daesh fighters in Italy. It was believed that those terrorists trained on carrying out suicide attacks in Europe.

A total of 160,593 people were interrogated by the Italian authorities in the period between March 2016 and March 2017. At airports, 34,000 others were interrogated and about 550 suspects were arrested. Moreover, 38 terrorists were serving time at the Italian prisons in the same period.

Being a entrance gate to the European countries, Italy has received many refugees and migrants via the sea, imposing a threat of infiltrating terrorists to the old continent.

However, Francesca Galli,  Assistant Professor in EU Law at Maastricht University  said that the main difference between Italy and other European countries like France and the U.K is that Italy does not have a large number of second-generation immigrants who have been radicalized, or can become extremists.