15 on Seized Ship Linked to Al Qaeda

Following a tip from U.S. naval intelligence, Italian authorities seized a ship off the island of Sicily that was carrying 15 suspected Al Qaeda members, and charged the men Thursday with conspiring to commit terrorist acts.

The suspects were taken into custody last month after arriving in the Sicilian port of Gela on a cargo ship from Morocco.

“We are certain that these people are part of a terrorist organization, and we are almost certain that that organization is Al Qaeda,” Santi Giuffre, chief of police for the Sicilian province of Caltanissetta, said at a news conference. “We have found interesting documents that would prove the accusations.”

He said police had seized telephone numbers, including several in Spain and France, which linked the men to Al Qaeda, the terrorist network that the U.S. blames for the Sept. 11 attacks. The 15 have been held since Aug. 5 in a Sicilian detention camp for illegal immigrants.

But neither Giuffre nor prosecutor Francesco Messineo made clear what the suspects might have been up to. “We can exclude the possibility of a terrorist attack in Italy,” Messineo said. “But it is possible they were trying to reach other branches of the network.” When captured, the suspects may have been planning to transfer to another vessel, investigators said.

Authorities identified the 15 suspects as Pakistanis, but Pakistan said the detainees are not its citizens and were traveling on false documents.

No comment was available from the men, who remain in custody.

Officials here said the decision to board the ship was made on the basis of a U.S. tip.

Police and members of Italy’s military intelligence service boarded the vessel and found the suspects along with seven Romanian crew members.

Notes and documents referring to Al Qaeda were found on the Romanian-registered vessel, which set sail from Casablanca, Morocco, in mid-July and was scheduled to visit Tunisia, Malta and the Libyan capital, Tripoli, authorities said.

All the men were carrying open return airline tickets from Karachi, Pakistan, to Casablanca.

U.S. Navy official Samuel Worth, who was at the news conference, said that one of the decoded words investigators found most alarming translates as “to unite in marriage.”

“We are alarmed because it’s a word that was intercepted during the first attack on the [World Trade Center] in 1993,” he said. “It was one of the elements that induced us to intervene.”