Milan station was bomb target

2004-03-25 15:52

Rome - Islamic extremists had planned a bomb attack on Milan's main railway station similar to that which rocked Madrid on March 11, Italian media reports said on Thursday.

Citing statements made to Italian anti-terrorist police by a man it called "Italy's first al-Qaeda turncoat", the daily Corriere della Sera said the attackers would have placed bombs in left-luggage lockers in the station and set them to blow up at a time when it would be packed with travellers.

Other targets named by the man were Milan's police headquarters, a Nato military base in Mondragone, near Naples, and Italian television personalities, according to the newspaper.

The Milan headquarters of Italy's paramilitary Carabinieri police was another target, it said.

The newspaper said the attacks were planned between 1997 and 2001.

The man, identified by the newspaper as a Tunisian called "Ahmed", was arrested in 2001 before the September 11 attacks in the United States, and sentenced to four years and six months for criminal association.

"We consider this collaborator to be plausible and we are continuing to check out his statements," Milan anti-terrorism magistrate Elio Ramondini said.

The Corriere della Sera quotes in its report from leaked statements made by the man to police in September, 2003.

It said Ahmed, a former taxi driver with a diploma in musicology, was convicted of being part of an extremist network which included Essid ben Khemais, considered by Italian authorities as a key al-Qaeda figure in Europe and jailed for five years in 2002.

- AFP