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May 28, 2007

Italy: Islamist Imam Acquitted On Terror Charges, But Is He Guilty?

News from International Herald Tribune, the Independent Online and Austria's PR Inside relates that a hardline Italian cleric, based in Milan, has had charges against him dropped. The imam of the Viale Jenner mosque and cultural center in Milan, called Abu Imad (though also known as Arman Ahmed Hissini) had been on trial with 31 others, accused of organizing and assisting the sending of jihadists to Bosnia and the Middle East. Only three of the defendants were found guilty on minor charges, and were given jail terms ranging from four and a half to six years.

The reason for Abu Imad and the others being acquitted by a panel of three judges today is not because of a lack of incriminating evidence, but because the statute of limitations has expired. In the official judges' report, Abu Imad was said to be "directly involved in financing, establishing contact with foreign groups and supplying combatants" and was "undoubtedly one of the organizers of the group."

The men who were on trial with Imad were from Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Libya, and were said to be providing logistical aid to the Salafist Group for Preching and Combat (GSPC, now renamed Al Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb) and also Ansar al-Islam. Both groups are linked with al Qaeda. The supporting of these groups is said to have taken place between 1990 and 1995.

So who is Abu Imad? He was wanted by the Egyptian authorities for involvement in the Egyptian terror group Gamaa Islamiya (also called Jamaa Islamiya or al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya). This group had been formerly headed by eye surgeon Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is now the deputy leader of al-Qaeda. In August last year, this group announced that it had joined al Qaeda. The group had slaughtered Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in a bomb attack in 1981, and in November 1997 members of the group had murdered 58 tourists at Luxor.

Imad was scared that the CIA would arrange an "extraordinary rendition". This had happened to an associate of Imad/Hissini called Abu Omar (pictured), also known as Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, who was an Egyptian asylum seeker. He had been taken by the CIA and the Italian secret Service from Milan in 2003. He claimed he had been sent back to Egypt, where he suffered torture in Cairo at the hands of the Egyptian authorities.

Abu Imad, aka Arman Ahmed Hissini or Al Husseini Ali Erman, was a vocal opponent of the publication of the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. In an interview with the BBC in March 2006, Imad had called the publishers of the cartoons "ignorant". He said: "Who are these people? Do they think that if they blow hard enough they can put out the sun?" At that time, Imad denied he had links with terror groups outside Italy, and said he did not send people to Iraq.

The magazine Il Giornale published in February 2006 an article by Fausto Biloslavo, in which Imad's associations with the late Abu Laban, the Danish cleric who manipulated the "cartoon crisis", were shown.

Biloslavo stated that immediately after the assassination of Anwar Sadat, Abu Imad had been jailed by the Egyptian authorities. On a cassette to commemorate the Islamic Cultural Center (Viale Jenner) and its ninth convention (held at Modena), Abu Imad can be heard asking guest speaker Mohammed al-Fizazi: "Is it alright to kill a person who prays and fasts, but agrees with the ideas of the secular, democratic, and communist practical people?"

Mohammed al-Fizazi had been the preacher at the Al-Quds mosque in Hamburg, and his fiery sermons had been listened to by Mohammed Atta and other members of the "Hamburg cell" who had been involved in 9/11.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at May 28, 2007 3:40 PM

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