Kosovo Albanian Jihadists Planned to Attack Venice’s Rialto Bridge

2018-09-062018-09-06 by White Nettle

Italian police broke up an alleged jihadist cell in Venice who had celebrated last week’s terrorist attack in London and planned to blow up the city’s famous Rialto Bridge in the hope of killing hundreds of tourists. In a series of overnight raids, anti-terrorism police arrested three suspects, all of them Kosovars who were living in Italy.

Fisnik Bekaj, 24, Dake Haziraj, 25, and Arian Babaj, 27, were allegedly admirers of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and were secretly recorded discussing how they were ready to die for the sake of jihad. A fourth person, an unnamed minor also originally from Kosovo, was detained.

In wire-tapped telephone conversations, the suspects were recorded appearing to celebrate last week’s attack in London, in which Muslim convert Khalid Masood, 52, drove a car into crowds walking across Westminster Bridge, killing three people, before fatally stabbing a policeman, Keith Palmer, outside Parliament.

A phone intercept caught one of the men telling another: “You’ll go straight to paradise because of all the infidels in Venice. Put a bomb on the Rialto.”

In another conversation, one of the men said: “I can’t wait to take an oath to Allah. If they let me take the oath, I’m ready to die.”

They were all attached to the ideology of ISIS and interested in recent attacks, above all the one in London, which they praised (Adelchi D’Ippolito).

Built in the late 16th century and spanning the Grand Canal, the Rialto Bridge is one of Venice’s most iconic landmarks. Millions of tourists tramp over it each year as they make their way to St Mark’s Square and other well-known attractions in the World Heritage city.

Adelchi D’Ippolito, a prosecutor involved in the investigation, described the suspects as “truly dangerous”. “There was great adherence to the ideology of Isis and support for recent attacks, above all the one in London, to which they gave great appreciation,” he said.

Italian police released photos of the suspects, including a minor who was detained but not identified. Credit: AFP

The suspects had embarked on a training programme, putting themselves through physical exercises and viewing videos of Isil extremists explaining how to carry out knife attacks, the prosecutor said.

Police conducted a dozen raids in Venice’s historic centre, the nearby industrial town of Mestre on the mainland and the city of Treviso. They found a number of pistols as well as evidence that the trio had downloaded information from extremist websites about how to make bombs and carry out attacks with knives.

Police had kept the alleged cell under surveillance for months. The undercover operation began last year after one of the men came back from a trip to Syria. All had residency permits and were living in Italy legally. “There was a lot of talk about unconditional support to Isil. It wasn’t just theory and dogma,” said Mr D’Ippolito. The suspects were close to moving towards “planning and projects”, he said.

Two of the men worked as waiters in Venice and one of them was arrested in an apartment close to La Fenice, Venice’s historic opera house. “Compliments to the forces of law and order for having carried out this important operation,” said Luigi Brugnaro, the mayor of Venice. He thanked the police for “breaking up a dangerous and active jihadist cell in the centre of the city”.

Around 300 Kosovars have gone to fight with Islamist groups in Syria and Iraq, including Isil and al-Nusra Front.

Kosovo once had the dubious distinction of producing the highest number, per capita, of “foreign fighters” of any country in Europe. The number of Kosovars joining extremist groups has waned in the last year, partly as a result of the government cracking down on recruitment by radical imams and partly because of an education campaign.

Soldiers patrol Saint Mark’s Square Credit: Reuters

In November, Italy expelled a 24-year-old Kosovar with alleged links to terrorism. Gaffur Dibrani had lived near the town of Brescia for a decade and had alleged ties to a Moroccan extremist who joined Isil.

Also in November, Kosovan authorities arrested 19 people with alleged links to Isil who were suspected of plotting attacks in Kosovo and against the Israeli football team in a World Cup qualifier against Albania.

In December, German authorities arrested two brothers from Kosovo on suspicion of planning an attack on a shopping centre in the city of Oberhausen near the Dutch border. The arrests came a few days after the Berlin terrorist attack, in which Anis Amri, a Tunisian, drove a truck into a Christmas market. He was later shot dead by police in Italy.

Originally published on 2017-03-30

Source: The Telegraph

Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest.

Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!

Donate to Support Us

We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.

[wpedon id=”4696″ align=”left”]

READ MORE!

Americans Pay Price for Criminal Wars From Mass Shootings at Home

America’s horrendous gun violence can be attributed to many factors, but there is one factor that is hardly talked about or explored in public discourse – the apparent link between mass shootings and the rampant culture of US militarism.Mass shootings in the US – involving four or more persons – occur on an almost daily basis. The most recent major atrocity was in Virginia Beach last month in which 12 people were killed. The shooter was reportedly a military veteran.Turns out that US military veterans are disproportionately responsible for violent gun deaths among American civilians. Investigative journalist David Swanson has ...

Venice and Lombardy: Why is the Request for Independence Growing?

The following article was written before the recent referendum in Venice and Lombardy. It remains relevant as far as, everything happening in Europe those days is becoming, more a more, a manifestation of extreme social “egotism”, of generalized destruction of any form of solidarity and adherence to more general projects. This is especially true after the strategic defeat and capitulation of the European Left on the Greek question. “Everybody for himself” seems to dominate the continent. It is the historic triumph of the neoliberal Europe, but it reminds somehow the triumphs of the cancer on living organisms. Europe will hardly ...

The Tragic Declaration: Colonial Legacies, Balfour and Israel

So much after the fact; so much in terms of opportunism gone to seed and destruction. But planned historical calamities tend to be rare. There are only absurd moments, dastardly opportunities, and tragic convergences. History is less the outcome of wise deliberation than folly dressed up as reason, occasionally tinged by a touch of malice.On November 2, 1917, the British government published the Balfour Declaration (one of “sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations”) by means of a letter written by Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour to Lord Walter Rothschild. It suggested forthcoming British assistance for the establishment of a Jewish ...

1897. Public Record Office. --- Image by © Heritage Images/Corbis

The Western World’s Joke: Decolonization

‘Blowing from a Gun’ depicted by Vasily Vereshchagin in his painting ‘Suppression of the Indian Revolt by the English’ on the rebellion of 1857. Queen Victoria’s agent bought this painting, in an attempt to suppress it. ‘Blowing from the Gun’ was a means of execution where the prisoner is tied to the muzzle of a cannon, which is then fired, popping the victim’s head about 15 meters (50 feet) into the air, apparently a sort of juvenile entertainment for the colonizers.Following colonization, along came ‘decolonization’ and what do you suppose happened with colonial borders? They mostly remained as laid down ...

A Collection of Thoughts about American Foreign Policy

Louis XVI needed a revolution, Napoleon needed two historic military defeats, the Spanish Empire in the New World needed multiple revolutions, the Russian Czar needed a communist revolution, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires needed World War I, Nazi Germany needed World War II, Imperial Japan needed two atomic bombs, the Portuguese Empire in Africa needed a military coup at home, the Soviet Empire needed Mikhail Gorbachev … What will the American Empire need?I don’t believe anyone will consciously launch World War III. The situation now is more like the eve of World War I, when great powers were armed and ...

President Obama’s Farewell Speech

Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest. Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement! Donate to Support Us We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations. [wpedon id="4696" align="left"]

The End of Empire

The American empire is coming to an end. The U.S. economy is being drained by wars in the Middle East and vast military expansion around the globe. It is burdened by growing deficits, along with the devastating effects of deindustrialization and global trade agreements. Our democracy has been captured and destroyed by corporations that steadily demand more tax cuts, more deregulation and impunity from prosecution for massive acts of financial fraud, all the while looting trillions from the U.S. treasury in the form of bailouts. The nation has lost the power and respect needed to induce allies in Europe, Latin ...

The Illyrians: Autochthonous Balkan People having Nothing Common with Modern Albanians

It is true that every story about the Balkan Peninsula begins with the ancient Illyrians.[1] Historians believe that these Indo-European people were one of the largest European populations to inhabit the western portion of the Balkans from the coasts of the Ionian Sea and the Adriatic Sea to the Alps about 1000 B.C. Their eastern neighbours were also Indo-European peoples – the Thracians. The demarcation line between their settlements and their cultural and political influence was the Morava river in present-day Serbia (in Latin Margus, located in the Roman province of Moesia Superior) and the Vardar river in present-day FYR ...

Diagnosing the West with Sadistic Personality Disorder (SPD)

Western culture is clearly obsessed with rules, guilt, submissiveness and punishment.By now it is clear that the West is the least free society on Earth. In North America and Europe, almost everyone is under constant scrutiny: people are spied on, observed, their personal information is being continually extracted, and the surveillance cameras are used indiscriminately.Life is synchronized and managed. There are hardly any surprises.One can sleep with whomever he or she wishes (as long as it is done within the ‘allowed protocol’). Homosexuality and bisexuality are allowed. But that is about all; that is how far ‘freedom’ usually stretches.Rebellion is ...

United States Imperialism Continues War in Afghanistan and the Destabilization of Africa

In just one week the United States government will commemorate its 16th anniversary in the bombing and occupation of Afghanistan.This war did not really begin in 2001 resulting from the attacks on September 11 where planes were hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon headquartered right outside of Washington, D.C.U.S. involvement in the destabilization of Afghanistan goes back to the late 1970s when the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDP) led a socialist-oriented administration which advanced the cause of working people and farmers as well as providing fundamental civil rights to women. ...

Marti Ahtisaari and the Waffen SS

In 1999, when he was the President of Finland, Marti Ahtisaari’s government wanted to honor and to commemorate the 3,000 Finnish Nazi Waffen SS volunteers that served in Heinrich Himmler’s SS. Why would any government, indeed, why would anyone, want to honor and commemorate SS troops? Why would anyone want to honor and commemorate Nazis and Nazism? This is the question that has remained unanswered in the US and Western media about Marti Ahtisaari. As a sock puppet for the US, NATO, and EU, Ahtisaari’s role in honoring and commemorating the Nazi Waffen SS has been suppressed. As a Chairman ...

George H.W. Bush, the CIA and a Case of State-Sponsored Terrorism

"If the American people ever find out what we have done, they would chase us down the street and lynch us" George H.W. Bush, 1992 In early fall of 1976, after a Chilean government assassin had killed a Chilean dissident and an American woman with a car bomb in Washington, D.C., George H.W. Bush’s CIA leaked a false report clearing Chile’s military dictatorship and pointing the FBI in the wrong direction. The bogus CIA assessment, spread through Newsweek magazine and other U.S. media outlets, was planted despite CIA’s now admitted awareness at the time that Chile was participating in Operation Condor, a cross-border campaign ...

The First NATO: British and French Joint Aggressions in the Mid-19th Century

The two most militarily powerful nations in the West, both free to project naval power and maritime domination anywhere in the world, get together to punish and overthrow regimes they find guilty of human rights abuses and political repression in the name of human rights and promoting democracy: What could possibly go wrong?It is of course NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s new call for NATO, which has already over the past decade exercised its nation-building and promotion of enlightened regime policies with such brilliant success in Ukraine, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan to spread its mantle of protection, enlightenment and peace over ...

Congo doesn’t Need an Apology, It Needs Justice and Reparations

Protests against racism sparked by the police killing of George Floyd continue to sweep the globe, including in Belgium, where activists have demanded the removal of statues of King Leopold II, and an acknowledgement of the horrors he inflicted on the Democratic Republic of Congo.Pointing to a statue of King Leopold II, an activist told Reuters,“We won’t accept this until the government understands that this belongs in a museum, not in public space. Because it is a shame.”Leopold’s descendant King Philippe expressed regret in a letter amid the protests, and as Congo celebrated 60 years of independence on June 30.“Our ...

Documentary Film: “Kosovo: Can You Imagine?” (2009, Canada)

“Kosovo: Can You Imagine?” is a documentary film by Canadian film maker Boris Malagurski, about the Serbs that live in Kosovo and the lack of human rights that they have today, in the 21st century.Most of the Kosovo Serbs have been ethnically cleansed by the Albanians who make up the majority of Kosovo.Kosovo has been under UN administration since 1999 when NATO bombed Serbia for 78 days to halt a crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatism in its province of Kosovo.In the years following the war, thousands of Serbs were expelled from their homes, kidnapped and killed. Their houses, cultural and ...

NATO: Lying All the Way to Barbarossa

Despite claims made during NATO Summit Warsaw 2016, that “NATO remains a fundamental source of security for our people, and stability for the wider world,” it is clear that the threats and challenges NATO poses as existing to confront are in fact threats of its own, intentional creation and continued perpetuation. From the ongoing refugee crisis triggered by NATO’s own global-spanning and ongoing military interventions, invasions, and occupations, to its continued expansion along Russia’s borders – violating every convention and “norm” that existed during the Cold War to keep it “cold,” NATO has proven that it is to the populations it poses as protector over, ...

Ignorance and Indoctrination of Westerners Kills Millions

Our Planet Earth is heading straight towards the most dangerous collision in its history. It is not a collision with some foreign body, with an asteroid or a comet, but with the most brutal and selfish chunk of its own inhabitants: with people who proudly call themselves “members of the Western civilization.” Again and again it is clearly demonstrated that Western culture, which the paramount psychologist Carl Jung used to call “pathology”, couldn’t be trusted. This “culture” had already mercilessly slaughtered several hundreds of millions of people in all corners of the world; it enslaved entire continents, and plundered all that had ...

Zagreb, Independent State of Croatia, 1941

How Holocaust Revisionists Remake History as Nationalist Sham

The consumption of history seems to be more widespread than ever: from general-interest history magazines and historical dramas and documentaries to historical fiction, popular history seems, well, unprecedentedly popular. The evolution of the TV historian reflects this trend: where once real working historians who had written serious books hosted television programmes, these days they are as likely to be photogenic media presenters with minimal, if any, actual history qualifications. The attraction of history and being a historian are not hard to work out. In the public imagination, historians are usually considered to be intelligent, objective people, if a little eccentric, who tell ...

The Occupied Golan Heights: How Israel Thrives from Syria’s Natural Resources

We all know how the story goes. The Golan Heights is Syrian territory that has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War. It was then controversially annexed in 1981, despite the UN calling the efforts “null”, “void” and “without international legal effect”. Today it is still internationally and legally recognised as Syrian land, but Israel persists with its possession.Of course, such persistence can prove to be quite lucrative when the land is abundant in resources – especially land as fertile as the Syrian Golan – a generous source of gushing waters and game changing oil reserves.In fact, the ...

Understanding NATO, Ending War

On 4 April 2019, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, better known as NATO, marked the 70th anniversary of its existence with a conference attended by the foreign ministers of member nations in Washington DC. This will be complemented by a meeting of the heads of state of member nations in London next December.Coinciding with the anniversary event on 4 April, peace activists and concerned scholars in several countries conducted a variety of events to draw attention to, and further document, the many war crimes and other atrocities committed by NATO (sometimes by deploying its associate and crony terrorist armies – ISIS, ...