Italian police have arrested an Afghan asylum seeker on international terrorism charges, while another two members of a cell suspected of planning attacks in Europe are on the run, news reports say.
The ANSA news agency said Carabinieri police in the southern city of Bari apprehended 23-year-old Hakim Nasiri, who was living in a migrant centre near the local airport and had been granted international protection on May 6.
Nasiri and his accomplices are presumed to have planned strikes on "airports, ports, police vehicles, shopping centres, hotels as well as other unspecified terrorist attacks in Italy and Britain," ANSA said, quoting arrest warrant documentation.
Authorities started investigating the group in December, after they were reported as suspicious for shooting footage of a Bari shopping centre with a mobile phone.
Investigators later found that the Afghans collected Islamist propaganda material on their mobile phones, such as pictures of Taliban fighters, mutilated US soldiers and insulting images of anti-Taliban campaigner Malala Yousafzai.
Another Afghan refugee, 29-year-old Gulistan Ahmadzai, was arrested on charges of abetting illegal migration. He is accused of smuggling people into Italy from Afghanistan or Pakistan, and organising their onward journeys to France.
Another man, wanted for the same offences, was classified as a fugitive.
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