Vatican on High Alert For Easter

Good Friday and the upcoming Easter weekend always means heightened security in the Italian capital Rome and the Vatican and this year even more so after the police arrested 6 Islamic extremists in several terrorism raids all over the country.

The arrests were made in Rome and Naples. On Thursday, five Tunisians which were linked to the perpetrator of the Christmas market terror attack in Berlin were captured in Naples and today a Moroccan 19-year old was held in Rome.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Italian police have detained a 19-year-old Moroccan man on suspicion of ‘intense jihad propaganda’. <br><br>Ilyass Hadouz was detained following a dawn raid in the northern region of Piedmont.<br><br>Read more: <a href="https://t.co/9X2xrjZejF">https://t.co/9X2xrjZejF</a> <a href="https://t.co/Fsp3ZQBeAI">pic.twitter.com/Fsp3ZQBeAI</a></p>&mdash; euronews (@euronews) <a href="https://twitter.com/euronews/status/979686063131254784?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 30, 2018</a></blockquote>

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Italy is one of the few major European countries that has not suffered a large-scale terror attack in recent years and because of the importance of the Vatican, it always features high on the ISIS hit list.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en-gb"><p lang="it" dir="ltr">Arrestati da <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Digos?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Digos</a> Roma e Latina con <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Dcpp?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Dcpp</a> 5 uomini riconducibili alla rete di <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AnisAmri?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AnisAmri</a><br>Uno di loro gli avrebbe dovuto procurare documenti falsi per farlo uscire dall&#39;Italia <a href="https://t.co/4LtDB2mf33">pic.twitter.com/4LtDB2mf33</a></p>&mdash; Polizia di Stato (@poliziadistato) <a href="https://twitter.com/poliziadistato/status/979233233635299329?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">29 March 2018</a></blockquote>

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Mr Marco Minniti, Italy’s interior minister, stated: “There are between 25,000 and 30,000 foreign fighters who, in the face of a military retreat, are preparing to infiltrate the diaspora in Europe, taking advantage of the routes that remain open, that is to say the central Mediterranean route (from Libya to Italy).”

“That makes Italy’s location even more crucial and means that control of Libya’s borders, both in the north (along the coast) and the south (in the desert), is a national security priority.”

Source:

http://www.euronews.com/2018/03/30/moroccan-terror-suspect-detained-in-italy