A vast police operation coordinated by the Turin Public Prosecutor's Office took place today in the context of which the Turin State Police - with the support of the police offices of Milan, Naples, Modena, Bergamo and Reggio Emilia - carried out to a precautionary custody order in prison issued by the GIP of the Piedmontese capital and to 13 house and personal searches against members of Islamic extremist circles based in northern Italy. The investigation carried out by DIGOS of Turin with the support of the Service for the Countering of Extremism and External Terrorism of UCIGOS - led to the arrest for participation in the terrorist association of the Islamic State of a 23-year-old Moroccan naturalized Italian, HALILI Elmahdi . With him, other foreigners and Italians converted to Islam, actively engaged in a campaign of radicalization and proselytism conducted above all on the web, ended up in the network of investigators.
The investigation by the State Police was born at the end of 2015, when the young man had already been the subject of a plea bargaining sentence, issued by the Court of Turin under the penalty of two years of imprisonment with conditional suspension of the same for incitement to commit a crime for the purpose of terrorism , having drafted and published on the web some documents extolling the Islamic State. The subsequent investigation activities initiated by the Digos policemen have highlighted a growing path of radicalization of the HALILI which, despite the aforementioned sentence, had even intensified its proselytizing and indoctrinating activities through the retrieval, consultation on various multimedia platforms and archiving of various propaganda material and praising the Jihad produced by the Islamic State.
Among the material gathered in the investigative acts there are several films reproducing the deeds of the mujaheddin in Syria and Iraq, the bloody executions carried out against civilians and the military, the claims and / or celebrations of the attacks in Paris and Brussels as well as the fervent sermons of "hate preachers" of the caliber of Anwar AL-AWLAKI, also known as "the bin Laden of the Internet", considered by HALILI as real spiritual fathers like the spokesman of the Caliphate Mohamed AL ADNANI. Just on the occasion of the spread of the news of the death of AL ADNANI, the arrested person had created and published on a social platform public access three playlists with the most famous messages of the late spokesman of the Islamic State including the one published in September 2014 'Order of the Islamic State to unleash the campaign of terror in Europe that led to the massacres carried out since January 2015.