Posted on 08/20/2002 12:08:08 PM PDT by Destro
Italy Thwarts Basilica Attack Plot
Tue Aug 20, 2:43 PM ET
A Moroccan man is shown walking in the San Patronio Basilica in Bologna, northern Italy, in this picture taken from a home video seized Monday by Italian authorities and made available Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2002, during a press conference. Four Moroccans and an Italian, left, whose names were not made public, were arrested Monday under the suspiscion of terrorism after they filmed themselves near the central altar and the frescoes in the basilica. (AP Photo/Gianfilippo Oggioni, HO)
By FRANCES D'EMILIO, Associated Press Writer
ROME (AP) - Italian police arrested four Moroccans and an Italian who they say may have been planning to attack a Bologna basilica with a 15th-century fresco inside that depicts the Muslim prophet Muhammad in hell, being devoured by demons.
Prosecutor Paolo Giovagnoli said the five men were arrested Monday in the church itself, San Petronio Basilica, and were accused of criminal association with the aim of terrorism.
In June, Milan daily Corriere della Sera reported that Islamic extremists were plotting to attack the basilica because they found the fresco insulting to Islam. Also in June, plainclothes police were assigned to the basilica.
A group of Italian Muslims had appealed unsuccessfully to the Vatican ( news - web sites) last year to have the fresco, by Giovanni da Modena, removed or to have parts of it covered, arguing that it offended Islam.
The five men, who live in Padua, a city in northeastern Italy, were arrested after they videotaped the fresco and the central altar with a medieval-era crucifix, and were overheard saying worrisome things, Giovagnoli said.
"They were heard saying phrases hostile to (the Christian) religion, expressing the possibility of destroying" religious symbols, Giovagnoli said.
Among the phrases the men said, according to the prosecutor:
_ "That which (Osama) bin Laden does is just what's needed."
_ "If they don't take it (the fresco) away, everything will come tumbling down."
Police were still translating the conversations, which were spoken in Berber, which is spoken in northern Africa.
Authorities did not immediately release the men's names.
Corriere della Sera had reported that Carabinieri paramilitary police learned of a plot to attack the basilica by intercepting phone conversations as part of a larger investigation into Muslim extremists operating in Italy.
That investigation led to the convictions earlier this year of seven Tunisians in Milan who were accused of providing logistical support to recruits of al-Qaida, bin Laden's terrorist network, passing through Europe.
Asked if the Bologna authorities had uncovered any links between the five men and suspected terrorist cells in other Italian cities, Giovagnoli said so far nothing has turned up to indicate a connection.
Clinton's State Dept blames that dead Hitler lover dead President Tudjman of Croatia for inviting al-Qaida/Iran into Bosnia!! You keep posting Clinton made you do it! With allies like these who needs enemies!
Yes, and the ease of travel today. Very quickly bringing jihadists anywhere they want to go.
Yes, it is. Here is an excerpt:
And in Italy the radicals are already targeting their next cultural icon for destruction: the works of Dante Alighieri, Italy's national poet. In demanding that Giovanni da Modena's fresco be pulverized, the Unione blamed the perceived anti-Islamic sentiment of modern Italians on Dante, who in the Middle Ages placed Mohammed in the ninth circle of hell in the 28th Canto of his masterpiece, "The Inferno." While it is true that the fretted-over fresco was based on this 14th-century work, the would-be vandals neglect to mention that both Dante and Giovanni damned plenty of their fellow Catholics in their depictions of hell, including a smattering of priests, a pope or two, and even a canonized saint. As far as eternal perdition was concerned, these medireview artists were equal opportunity judges. Despite this fact, the Unione demands that Dante not be taught in many Italian schools.
Dante's devil isn't excreting/rebirthing anyone; he's frozen in ice up to his waist. And he has three faces, whose mouths eternally gnaw on the three most-damned souls in eternity: Brutus, Cassius, and (in the center, starring role) Judas Iscariot.
(Of course, it goes without saying that Dante never met Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Bill Clinton. :-0)
...While I was all absorbed in seeing him, He looked at me, and opened with his hands His bosom, saying: "See now how I rend me;
How mutilated, see, is Mahomet; In front of me doth Ali weeping go, Cleft in the face from forelock unto chin;
And all the others whom thou here beholdest, Disseminators of scandal and of schism While living were, and therefore are cleft thus.
A devil is behind here, who doth cleave us Thus cruelly, unto the falchion's edge Putting again each one of all this ream,...
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