– ITALY 

 

The country territory is about 302,000 km and it has a population of about 59 millions people.  Around 1.4% – 820,000 people are Muslims. The two prominent groups are the Albanian who fled their country on the Eastern side of the Adriatic sea and Algerians who escaped the Algerian civil war in the 90’s.

ITALY is an unstable Western democracy with frequent elections and changing of governments and policy. Between the years 1911- 1945 ITALY ruled Libya but otherwise had no meaningful colonial legacy. A small Italian expedition force served in Iraq in the years 2003-2005 and another small Italian force is a part of all European NATO expedition force in Afghanistan.

The Albanian are rarely involved in Islamic Terror but many of the Algerian have a background as Islamic activists and “Mujahidin” (Holly Warriors) from their homeland Algeria. ITALY has a long experience fighting terror from the anarchic groups like “The Red Brigades” in the 70’s and early 80’s and the Mafia all the years after the Second World War. Therefore the Italian police is very efficient in fighting terror cells and foiling terror attacks.

Despite intensive militant Islamic activity, mainly in the industrial North, the Italian security services managed to prevent, so far, (04/2007) all attempts to carry on terror attacks in ITALY. One of the main means to fight terror in ITALY is the fast deportation of non citizen suspects from ITALY. The deportees can later on fight their deportation in court from abroad.

Many hundreds of Islamic activists were deported within a night from ITALY and many hundreds were arrested in ITALY after The 9/11, operation “Absolute Justice” in Afghanistan in 11/2001 and the war in Iraq since 04/2003.

* Related topics ;

• 11/2003 -IRAQ, NASIRIYA BOMBING
  01/2003 -THE RICIN PLOT
  1998-01 -MILAN NETWORK

 

 

• wikipedia 
   infoplease