Six people were arrested between Lecco and Varese as part of an operation against jihadist terrorism conducted by ROS and Digos. Some of those arrested spoke to each other of possible terrorist attacks, with a "particular attention to Rome", the police said.
Those arrested include Mohamed Koraichi, born in Morocco on February 26, 1985 and residing in Bulciago (Lecco), and his wife Alice Brignoli, who changed her name to Aisha after converting to Islam, born in Erba on December 13, 1977. The couple is on the run and according to investigators and investigators they are with their three children aged 6, 4 and 2 in the territory of the Islamic State terrorist organization.
Instead, Wafa Koraichi, born in Morocco on 17 April 1992 and sister of Mohamed, was arrested in Baveno, in the province of Verbania. Abderrahim Moutaharrik, an Italian citizen of Moroccan origins, boxing champion in Switzerland, born on 23 June 1988 and residing in Lecco, and his wife Salma Bencharki, also born in Morocco on 15 March 1990, were also arrested.
Finally, Abderrahmane Khachia, born in Morocco on 2 May 1993 and resident in Brunello (Varese), ended up in prison. The young man is the brother of Oussama Khachia, 30, a worker, a foreign fighter who grew up in Brunello and was expelled from Italy on 28 January 2015 for some posts on Facebook in favor of ISIS. Later he too was expelled from Switzerland and would eventually reach Syria where he would die after joining the Caliphate.
"I want to strike Israel in Rome", said Abderrahim Moutaharrik, intercepted last February 6, speaking with Abderrahmane Khachia, who also ended up in prison. Moutaharrik refers "to a plan by him to carry out an attack on the Israeli Embassy" clarifying "that he had contacted an Albanian subject to obtain weapons, failing to do so".
Regarding the possible attacks there was "particular attention to the city of Rome", the investigators said because, according to those arrested, "for the Jubilee it is a place of pilgrimage and where pilgrims find the strength to fight the Islamists". From the Syrian-Iraqi war zones "the request to carry out attacks on Italian territory, a non-generic but specific indication that emerges from messages that we have intercepted", explained the deputy prosecutor of Milan Maurizio Romanelli.
The Moroccan man arrested because he wanted to leave to join ISIS with his wife and two children “is a quality sportsman, a high-level kickboxing boxer in Italy and abroad. It would have been him – explained the prosecutor – who received the request to carry out attacks in Italy by the Moroccan man who was a resident of Bulciago and who more than a year ago went with his wife and three children to the war zones”.
