Italian, UK police break up Islamic militant cell

MILAN (Reuters) - Italian and British police arrested nine suspected members of a North African Islamic militant group linked to al Qaeda, which had the potential to strike targets in Europe, Italian police said on Thursday.

The arrests targeted a cell of the al Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb, previously known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, or GSPC, police in Milan said. The nine arrested were Tunisians.

Police said the cell was a financial and logistical base sending money to camps in Afghanistan, but also recruited fighters and had links to attacks in Tunisia and Algeria this year.

"The group ... was a cell inspired by al Qaeda ... and potentially able to strike targets in Italy, Europe and other countries in the world," said a copy of the arrest warrant obtained by Reuters. It named all those detained.

"The organization created a logistical base in Italy and a channel to recruit mujahideen in the terrorist jihadist fight in Afghanistan, Algeria, Tunisia, Chechnya and Bosnia," Domenico Grimaldi, head of a police criminal investigation unit, added.

One of the suspects, 46 year-old Habib Ignaoua, was detained at his home in north London on a arrest warrant issued by Italy, British police said, in an operation linked to the Milan swoop.

British police said he was wanted for offences including terrorism and forgery and that the warrant alleged that "between 1997 and 1999 he convinced and organized volunteers to undergo military training in Afghanistan for jihad with the use of false documentation".

TRAINING CAMPS

In Italy, one of the chief suspects, Essid Sami Ben Khemais, was about to leave jail last week after a six-year sentence when the new arrest warrant was served.

The detentions, made after a former cell member collaborated with police and described the training camps, appeared to be the first against the group in Europe since it changed name in January to position itself as the North African arm of Osama bin Laden's network.

While some European counter-terrorism sources view the name change as a propaganda exercise, others fear a broadening of the threat to both North Africa and parts of Europe.

The group claimed responsibility for the April 11 bombings in Algiers that killed 33 people. Security experts say a spate of suicide bombings in Algeria and Morocco that month marked a switch to the tactics used by al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan.

France's top anti-terrorism investigator, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, told Reuters this week that the former GSPC might now try to expand its network into France, Spain and Italy.

"The GSPC has become, as it were, a sort of regional branch of al Qaeda, its mission being to federate all the radical, Salafist organizations in North Africa -- Moroccan, Libyan and Tunisian -- and, at the same time, to provide logistical support to the Iraqi networks," Bruguiere said.

(Additional reporting by Mark Trevelyan in London)