An Islamic State plot to attack the Vatican and several foreign embassies, including the Israeli Embassy in Rome, was recently uncovered by Italian authorities, local media reported over the weekend. Four suspected Islamic extremists were arrested in connection to the terrorist plot, and arrest warrants were issued for two other individuals, the Milan prosecutor said.
According to available information, the four suspects in custody are in their 20s, and all are Moroccan in origin. The two suspects who remain at large are a couple, 39-year-old Italian woman Alice Brignoli and her husband Mohamed Koraichi, who are believed to have left Italy in late 2015, presumably for Syria.
Milan Prosecutor Maurizio Romanelli named one of the suspects as Abderrahim Moutahrrick, saying authorities had evidence that Moutahrrick had been ordered by his Islamic State handlers to carry out a terrorist attack in Rome during the Holy Year—a period announced by Pope Francis spanning from December 2015 to November 2016.
Romanelli told reporters that Moutahrrick had planned to attack the Vatican and the Israeli Embassy in Rome, saying a wiretap of the suspects yielded a recording on which Moutahrrick is heard telling one of the other suspects, 23-year-old Abderrahmane Khachia, “I want to hit Israel in Rome.”
Khachia was arrested Thursday in the northern Italian city of Varese. Prior to his arrest, Moutahrrick was living in Lecco, north of Milan.
Italian authorities said that Moutahrrick had sought to buy weapons from an Albanian arms dealer. The suspect further planned to take his wife and two children to Islamic State-held territory in Syria, they said.
Romanelli told reporters the suspects communicated using the WhatsApp messenger service. The exchange was “very strong, very serious and very efficient” he said, and clearly meant “to incite lone-wolf attacks… as the best way of creating terror within Western countries. This is a new profile, because it was not a generic indication, but an indication given to a specific person who was invited to act within the territory of the Italian State,” he said.
By Dan Lavie and Israel Hayom Staff
