Italian police said Friday they had arrested a Bangladesh citizen suspected of belonging to a Pakistani Al-Qaeda-linked group who was studying military tactics and publishing incendiary videos online.
Police in Genoa said the man, who described himself on Facebook as an “Al-Qaeda lover”, had posted videos and messages online “inciting terrorist actions or acts of intolerance toward other communities”.
The suspect and his contacts “are part of an intercontinental network subservient to the logic of Al-Qaeda, having as its objective the propaganda of violent redemption in the name of an intolerant jihadist Salafism,” wrote police in a statement.
Police claim the suspect, who has been under investigation since 2021, is part of Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and was awaiting his residency in Italy before planning to fight in Pakistan.
The militant group with a hardline Islamist ideology — which the United States considers a foreign terror group — the TTP emerged in 2007 and carried out a horrific wave of violence in Pakistan that ended with a military crackdown from 2014.
The group, which has links to al-Qaeda, has recently been emboldened by the return to power of the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan.
The suspect in Italy had acquired instructions on the use of AK47 rifles and military combat techniques and made videos of himself engaged in military exercises that “manifested online his readiness for combat and martyrdom,” police said.
