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November 10, 2005
Italy: Secret Trial of Cremona Islamists
The Italian news agency AGI states that at Cremona, a trial is being held behind closed doors and under strict security. A key witness, Zouaoui Chokri, will be giving evidence at the Cremona Assizes Court against six Islamic men accused of international terrorism.
Chokri himself had been arrested in 2003 for drugs offences, but offered to give information on terrorist activities which were hapening in Cremona and Milan.
So far, he has given to the judges a letter, which is said to have been sent to him by the former Cremona imam, Mourad Trabelsi. Trabelsi is believed by prosecutors to be the terror cell's "chief ideologue".
According to the US Treasury, Trabelsi was the leader of a terror cell connected with the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, or Groupe Islamique Combattant Marocain (GICM), who have links with al-Qaeda and are thought to have been connected with the bombings at Madrid in March 2004 and at Casablanca in May 2003.
Trabelsi and Noureddine Drissi are said in this report to have been designated as terrorists by the United States. They headed the cell until their arrest in April 2003. Others named from the cell are Ahmed El Bouhali, a Moroccan national, Faycal Boughanemi, a Tunisian, and Abdelkader Laagoub, another Tunisian. Laagoub founded the Cremona cell in 1998 and headed it until February 2004. The cell also had links to Ansar al Islam, an Iraqi terror group.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at November 10, 2005 11:46 PM
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