18 Al-Qaeda Islamic Extremists Arrested in Italy for 2010 Vatican Terror Plot

ARRESTS MADE IN ITALY FOR 2010 SUICIDE BOMB PLOT AGAINST THE VATICAN AND POPE BENEDICT XVI …

As reported at Reuters, Italian security forces have arrested 18 radical Islamic extremists Friday who prosecutors said were behind a failed 2010 plot to attack the Vatican as well as a bombing at a Pakistan market that killed more than 100 a year earlier. Prosecutor Mauro Mura stated in Cagliari, Sardinia that wiretaps indicated the suspected terrorists, including two former bodyguards for Usama bin Laden, planned a bomb attack at the Vatican and went as far as to send a suicide bomber to Rome.

Italian police were arresting 18 people on Friday suspected of belonging to an armed group linked to al Qaeda who were plotting attacks on the Vatican as well as in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Some of the suspects, who are all Pakistanis and Afghans, were arrested in early morning raids across Italy. Police burst into the home of the group’s suspected spiritual leader, in the northern city of Bergamo, a video released by them showed.

Though the suspects were plotting attacks mainly in their native countries, phone taps suggest the Vatican was also a target, said Mauro Mura, chief prosecutor of the Sardinian city of Cagliari, where the group based its headquarters.

In the tapped conversations, the suspects discuss “a big jihad in Italy,” added Mario Carta, head of the police unit on the case. They reference the word “baba”, which could mean the pope, Carta said.

“We don’t have proof, we have strong suspicion,” that the Holy See was a possible target, he added.

Italy: Al-Qaeda cell planned suicide attack on Vatican:

Raids were carried out simultaneously in seven different Italian provinces with arrest warrants for 18 suspected Islamic extremists following a lengthy investigation in Cagliari, capital of the Italian island Sardinia.

Authorities uncovered plans for a suicide bomber plot against the Vatican in 2010, when Pope Benedict XVI was pontiff. Evidence includes a “martyr’s vow” from a would-be suicide bomber threatening to strike against the Vatican, the spiritual focal point for the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics.

Mario Carta, an official from the counter-terror police force that carried out the raids, called it “one of the most important operations ever carried out in Italy.” Police said the operation targeted an “extremely well-structured terror network” based in Sardinia since at least 2005 that was made up of Pakistani and Afghan nationals.

Nine people have been arrested, and two are still at large in Italy. Seven of the suspects are believed to be in Pakistan, Carta said.