State Police: operation "Mosaic 2". Hub of false document disarticulated in Naples. Involved suspected facilitator of Anis AMRI
Eight people arrested, twenty searches and nineteen investigated, two premises seized: this is the balance of the "Mosaic 2" operation that the Digos Counter-Terrorism Section of the Rome Police Headquarters, coordinated by the Public Prosecutor of Naples, carried out today , with the operational support of the Digos of Naples, Caserta and Benevento, as well as the Crime Prevention Department and the Scientific Police Cabinets for Lazio, as well as for Campania and Molise.
A total of 19 people are involved, including 12 Italian citizens and 7 of foreign nationality, attested in the provinces of Naples, Benevento and Caserta and investigated in the context of a criminal proceeding coordinated by the District Anti-Mafia and Counter-Terrorism Directorate of the Public Prosecutor of Naples .
The investigation, in the context of which the crimes of criminal association aimed at the production, recycling and trafficking of counterfeit identity documents were contested, as well as in favoring illegal immigration instrumental to the international terrorism circuit, was launched in July. 2019, following the conclusion of the Mosaic investigation, which had allowed to reconstruct and disarticulate the relational network in Italy attributable to the well-known ANIS AMRI, author of the Berlin massacre in 2016, as well as dismantle a cell inspired by Islamic fundamentalism against which they had been found advanced projects of contraindicated activities on the national territory.
The current investigations, lasting ten months and conducted both through technical activities and with traditional judicial police services, have allowed the discovery of two different criminal contexts, one functional to the other, with a transnational projection.
The illicit business, from investigative evidence, would be attested on three different operating levels. The documentary production would be concentrated in the hands of four brothers of Campania origin, who, making use of a dense network of environmental coverings, would set up a real clandestine print shop in the Porta Capuana area. The range of documents produced is vast: from identity cards to residence permits, from driving licenses to police reports.
The documents appeared to have been commissioned by subjects of non-EU origin gravitating in the area, who would then have been asked to provide counterfeiters with personal data and photographs to be applied on the supports. According to the investigative findings, in the course of the investigations, the "owners" of the printing house fed the illegal activity in search of ever higher quality skills, also with 'Market studies' which allowed to acquire holograms for the production of more and more identity cards plausible and reliable, or increasingly efficient printers.
The "delivery", according to the investigative results, would have occurred thanks to the shipping services ensured by a commercial activity in the sector, always located in the Campania capital, in the area close to the Central Station, which, through "parallel" accounting, guaranteed a preferential treatment for the clients of the "offending" shipments, allowing - as senders - the use of cover names.
Singular also the use of the name of APU NAGAR, well-known character of the television series "The Simpsons".
Among the intermediaries, the suspect CMS, an Algerian citizen, was identified who in the course of investigations related to other criminal proceedings emerged as a probable assistant who would have helped ANIS AMRI to find documents before leaving for Germany, as well as, in 2017, as part of a further investigation conducted by the Public Prosecutor's Office of Rome relating to the recycling of thousands of Italian passports stolen from the State Mint Polygraphic Institute and also placed in circuits in the smell of contiguity with facilitators of aspiring foreign fighters.
The aforementioned was in direct contact with both the printing house and the shipping center, in April he was arrested on the occasion of a check in the Campania capital, as he was already the recipient of the European Arrest Warrant issued by the French Authorities for association to crime aimed at laundering counterfeit banknotes.
During the investigations, shipments destined for abroad were subject to targeted and systematic checks at international couriers unknowingly used as carriers, and allowed to find papillary impressions of numerous suspects on the packaged documents.
In order to better delineate the criminal and criminogenic potential of the two crystallized criminal contexts, the Central Directorate of the Prevention Police -Ucigos, with the Service for the fight against extremism and external terrorism, using the collaboration of the ECTC (European Counter Terrorism Center) gave impetus to the activation of the Europol police cooperation channels in order to carry out searches abroad.
In conjunction with the execution of the measures delegated by the judicial authority on the national territory, similar activities were carried out in France, Greece and Spain, Belgium, Germany and Malta.
In this regard, it should be noted that during the investigations some of the documents checked at the couriers were then intercepted abroad by the local police or at some Italian air border stopovers (Ventimiglia and Bologna), in possession of subjects about to leave the Italy to other destinations or to move between states.
Among the final recipients of the counterfeit documents, persons subject to the arrest warrant would also have been indicated.
For the sake of completeness, in relation to the judicial police operation Mosaic 1 - from which the current investigation originates - it was necessary to draw attention to the fact that on 30 July 2016 (as reported by the German authorities), Anis AMRI had been the subject of a check on board a bus along the Berlin-Zurich route, when he had presented the false Italian identity card issued by the Municipality of Rome, bearing his name and surname, although with a different place and date of birth.
Following a search, AMRI had been found in possession of a second identity card, quite similar to the one shown by the same, always issued by the Municipality of Rome, bearing the same serial numbers but photos of another subject and made out to this FAZI UR REHMAN, born in Rome on 22.02.1988.
In the same investigative context, first evidence emerged attributable to the shipping center of Corso Novara, one of the pivots of today's investigation, already indicated as instrumental to a further circuit of false documents, to which the aforementioned Anis AMRI would have drawn.
Further investigations are also underway on the social security front, where some suspects, during the interceptions, would have said they were preceptors of citizenship income.