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SNIPPET: "Adel Ben Mabrouk, 39, and Mohamed Ben Riadh Nasri, 43, are suspected of being members of a terror group with ties to al-Qaida. They were immediately taken into custody upon arrival in Milan and will be interrogated, a prosecutor told The Associated Press.

SNIPPET: "Arabic language schools in Nasr City are doing well and many Salafists come to Egypt in to learn the language of the Koran. Many deeply religious students from Europe come to Egypt to learn Arabic. The question is: are these European Salafists coming to study the language of the Koran or to prepare terrorist attacks?" SNIPPET: "In addition to language lessons, they usually follow courses in Islamic law offered by teachers ranging from the renowned Al-Azhar University to clandestine imams without permits. "Religious fanatics want to be taken seriously," says Walid al-Gohari, founder and director of the Al-Fajr institute,...

A man wanted by Interpol for his links to an alleged terrorist organisation has been advising Scotland Yard on countering Muslim extremism, a Times investigation has discovered. Mohamed Ali Harrath has been the subject of the Interpol red notice since 1992 because of his alleged activities in Tunisia, where he co-founded the Tunisian Islamic Front (FIT). Tunisia has accused Mr Harrath, the chief executive officer of the Islam Channel in Britain and an adviser to the Scotland Yard Muslim Contact Unit, of seeking help from Osama bin Laden. It says that the FIT wants to establish “an Islamic state by...

France has deported a Tunisian man to his homeland despite protests that he could face torture there. Adel Tebourski, 42, was put on an Air France flight back to Tunisia on Monday, officials said. Tebourski had served a jail sentence in France after being convicted of helping the killers of Afghan resistance leader Ahmed Shah Masood in 2001. The French authorities described Tebourski as a serious threat to national security. French campaigners have said he could be tortured in Tunisia, and the UN torture committee last month called on Paris to suspend his deportation, the French news agency AFP reports....

A KEY al-Qaeda operative responsible for recruiting the shoe bomber Richard Reid and one of the September 11 hijackers helped to kidnap five British children from their Norwich home and take them to Libya, a court was told yesterday. Djamel Beghal, 39, is serving ten years in a French prison for plotting a suicide attack on the US Embassy in Paris and was described as so dangerous that even other al-Qaeda members thought him beyond the pale. While he was living in Leicester in the late 1990s Beghal, an Algerian, met Azzedin Journazi, from Libya, at a city mosque and...

ARIS, May 29 — Italian and German investigators have disclosed fresh information suggesting that hints of an attack involving aircraft and the United States were more widespread among European law enforcement agencies before Sept. 11 than previously suspected.The disclosures come after weeks in which the Bush administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which announced a shake-up today, have come under sharp criticism that they did not pay sufficient heed to signs of Al Qaeda plots in the United States that may have alerted them to the Sept. 11 attacks.A Central Intelligence Agency spokesman said today that before Sept....

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BERLIN (Reuters) - A Tunisian man, said by prosecutors to have trained with al Qaeda and met Osama bin Laden, has gone on trial accused of plotting to bomb Jewish and U.S. targets in Germany. Ihsan Garnaoui, 33, denies charges of trying to form a terrorist group to set off a series of bombs around the time of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March last year. According to the indictment, he entered Germany illegally in January 2003 to start planning the attacks, for which he had trained at an al Qaeda camp from July 2001. "There the accused first...

Terrorism charges have been brought in Germany against a Tunisian man accused of training with al-Qaeda. The 33-year-old man, identified only as Ihsan G, is accused of planning to form a terrorist group and attack US and Jewish targets in Germany. Prosecutors said the man hoped to set off "several explosions" to coincide with the start of the Iraq war. He is said to have been in the process of acquiring bomb-making chemicals when he was arrested in March. Prosecutors said the suspect received military and explosives training at an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan. It was there he is alleged...

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- A former professional soccer player who joined al-Qaida was convicted Tuesday of plotting to blow up a U.S. military base believed to contain nuclear weapons in the first verdict in a trial of nearly two dozen alleged militants. Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian who once played soccer in Germany, was given the maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. He had admitted planning to drive a car bomb into the canteen of the Kleine Brogel air base, where 100 U.S. military personnel work. Another Tunisian-born suspect, Tarek Maaroufi, was sentenced to six years for his involvement in...

BOSTON -- The FBI has issued an alert, asking the public to be on the lookout for four Middle Eastern men the agency wants for questioning on terrorist matters and they may be in New England. The FBI in Portland, Maine has alerted State Police that a witness may have seen two men who resembled the wanted men in that area. The witness spotted them in Naples, Maine, just northwest of Portland, last Sunday around 4 p.m. They were heading south on Route 302. The witness told police the two men were driving a late-model, slate-gray BMW with Massachusetts plates....

A Tunisian man arrested in March on suspicion of plotting Islamic extremist attacks has been implicated in a gold smuggling scam aimed at financing al Qaeda. Ihsan Garnaoui, 32, was involved for two years in gold smuggling that earned profits of 3.7 million euro ($7.5 million), says the German news magazine Focus. The gold had been bought in Dubai, melted down and impurities added to increase its weight, then re-sold in Germany. Six men suspected of planning attacks in Germany were arrested in raids in Berlin on March 21. All were later released except Garnaoui, accused "with other unknown persons...

BRUSSELS: A Tunisian former professional soccer player suspected of planning bombing attacks on US targets in Europe will stand trial May 22 along with 11 alleged accomplices, a Belgian court ruled Monday. Nizar Trabelsi faces charges including attempting to destroy property by explosion, possession of illegal arms and membership of a private militia. He is suspected of involvement in plots to blow up the American embassy in Paris and a Belgian air force base where about 100 US military personnel are stationed. Full details of the case against him and the other defendants were not immediately released. Belgian media reported...

Twenty young man, many of them students, have been arrested in Tunisia for looking at banned websites. The Tunisian Government is believed to censor the internet more tightly than any other country in the world, with the possible exception of China. A lawyer for the men, told the French news agency AFP that they are suspected of carrying out subversive activities on the internet. He said during their arrest last week in the southern coastal city of Zarsis, the police found and confiscated computer equipment used by the men. Interrogation The International Association for Support of Political Prisoners said police...

A Muslim man once suspected of planning to hijack a flight to England has said he was "stupid" to try to board a plane with a gun in his toiletry bag. Kerim Chatty, a Swede of Tunisian origin, sparked a security alert at Vasteras airport outside Stockholm in August when the weapon was found as he headed for a London-bound plane with 189 people on board. He was originally held on suspicion of planning to hijack the plane but the investigation was dropped for lack of evidence. On Friday, Chatty, 29, pleaded guilty in court to two counts of illegal...

FRANCE today confirmed that recent arrests made in two southern cities were connected to investigations into the al-Qaeda network, as three suspected members of a group close to Osama bin Laden's network went before an Italian court. French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy told Europe 21 radio that a series of recent arrests - eight in Lyon on Tuesday and one in Marseille last month - were connected to al-Qaeda. The eight arrested in Lyon are all family or friends of Nizar Nawar, who is believed to have carried out the April suicide attack on a synagogue in Tunisia. French police...

PARIS (AP) — Authorities in the south of France have arrested a Tunisian who is allegedly part of a group with links to the al-Qaida terrorist network, officials said Monday. The suspect, who was not identified, was arrested on Oct. 14 in Marseille — four days after Italian police arrested four alleged accomplices, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. A fifth man was arrested on Oct. 11 on the Mediterranean island of Malta. The group was based in Italy and provided logistical help to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, ministry officials said. The suspect arrested in France also allegedly...