Italians Arrest 28 Terror Suspects

Italian police on Friday announced Europe’s latest roundup of suspected Islamic terrorists, the arrests of 28 Pakistanis in a Naples slum and seizure of enough explosives to blow up a three-story building.

Police said an immigration raid on a warren of dingy connected apartments Wednesday led them to a hide-out where a false wall concealed a stockpile of TNT and nitroglycerin, lengths of fuse, detonators, and extremist texts and photos.

“The men have been arrested and charged with association with international terrorism, illegal possession of explosive material, falsification of documents and receiving stolen goods,” police said in a statement. Police also found maps that appeared to designate potential targets, according to an Italian law enforcement official. Those targets may have included the U.S. Consulate in Naples, a nearby North Atlantic Treaty Organization base and a U.S. air base, according to media reports.

The police statement also said the men are suspected of having links to the Al Qaeda network, but authorities gave no further information to back up that claim. It may be that some of the men are merely illegal immigrants, officials said.

“It appears to be serious, but it may very well be that not all 28 were involved,” the law enforcement official said. “Perhaps it was a smaller group of them.”

Like other European countries, Italy has tightened anti-terror defenses for reasons related to both security and politics. The government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who visited the White House on Thursday to discuss Iraq, is showing solidarity with the U.S. campaigns against terror and Saddam Hussein. Italian law enforcement has moved aggressively even in borderline cases where terrorism charges were later dropped and suspects released.

Although Italy has never been hit by Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda cells with international connections have been active here, especially in Milan. In early 2001, an intelligence report on an Al Qaeda plot in the works caused the State Department to shut down the U.S. Embassy in Rome.

In a tape-recorded statement late last year, Osama bin Laden singled out the country as a target for the first time, making reference to its alliance with the United States.

Last year, Italian anti-terrorist police working with U.S. naval intelligence arrested a group of Pakistanis in Sicily who were accused of being Al Qaeda members. That group was carrying inauthentic documents and had allegedly posed as the crew of a ship, authorities said.

During the operation in Naples this week, investigators found hundreds of identity documents, both real and forged, manuals explaining how to prepare fake papers and more than 100 mobile phones. The search also turned up lists of thousands of names and addresses from around the world.

The raid took place in the Forcella district, the historic home of the Neapolitan organized crime network known as the Camorra.

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Rotella reported from Brussels and De Cristofaro from Rome.