Tunisia Bardo museum attack suspect Abdelmajid Touil arrested in Italy
Date May 21, 2015 - 6:21AM
Gaia Pianigiani
Two gunmen and third unidentified man can be seen inside the Bardo museum in Tunis, during attack in March. Photo: AP
Rome: The Italian police said Wednesday they had arrested a 22-year old Moroccan man on suspicion of involvement in the March attack on the National Bardo Museum in Tunisia that killed 21 tourists and a police officer. The man had arrived in Italy aboard a migrant boat a month before the attack, a Milan police official said..
The suspect, Abdelmajid Touil, could face terrorism and manslaughter charges.
Tunisian authorities have already arrested more than 20 militants accused of responsibility for the attack. In an interview on Friday, the Tunisian Interior Ministry spokesman, Mohamed Ali Aroui, said that most of the group that helped orchestrate the March 18 attack in Tunis had been detained but that one Tunisian, who supplied the weapons, remained at large. It is unclear if the man arrested in Italy is the same suspect sought by the Tunisian authorities.
Abdelmajid Touil Photo: AP
Italian investigators, acting on information from intelligence services, determined that Touil reached Sicily on a boat with another 90 migrants on February 17 and that his mother and two brothers had been living legally in Italy for years. It was not immediately clear if he had left Italy after he arrived in February. Touil is expected to be extradited to Tunisia.
"He was not previously known to us," Bruno Megale, the chief anti-terrorism investigator in Milan, said at news conference. "He had only been identified a month before in Porto Empedocle. And he was then ordered expelled."
Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy praised the arrest, but other politicians seized on the opportunity to criticise the failure of the government to stop migrant boats from reaching Italy.
Matteo Salvini, leader of the anti-immigrant Northern League, cited what he called the "long-denounced danger" of terrorism suspects reaching Europe aboard migrant boats and called for the authorities to try harder to thwart departures from North Africa.
In a statement, Mariastella Gelmini, one of the national leaders of the centre-right party Forza Italia, said: "It is now clear that extremist terrorists use our country as a logistical base. We need strong action, also after the uncertainties of many European countries. We need to immediately stop the landings in Italy."
Italy's interior minister, Angelino Alfano, has said repeatedly that Italian intelligence services had no evidence that terrorists tried to reach Europe on migrant boat. On Wednesday, he praised the work of the Italian police.
"Alert in Italy is very high, our control system has shown it," Mr Alfano wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.
Several other politicians said that terrorists could take easier and less perilous routes to Italy than the overcrowded migrant boats that leave Libya and often call for help from the Italian coast guard while in transit.
Earlier this week, in response to the thousands migrants crossing the Mediterranean and the swelling number of deaths at sea, European leaders agreed on a united naval mission to intercept ships used by smugglers to transport migrants from North Africa to Italy.
According to the International Organisation for Migration, almost 39,000 people have arrived in Italy in the first 5 1/2 months of 2015, compared to more than 41,000 in 2014.
New York Times
