Italian, UK Police Break Up Islamic Militant Cell
from Reuters
The arrests targeted a cell of the al Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb, previously known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, or GSPC, police in Milan said. The nine arrested were Tunisians. Police said the cell was a financial and logistical base sending money to camps in Afghanistan, but also recruited fighters and had links to attacks in Tunisia and Algeria this year ... France's top anti-terrorism investigator, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, told Reuters this week that the former GSPC might now try to expand its network into France, Spain and Italy. "The GSPC has become, as it were, a sort of regional branch of al Qaeda, its mission being to federate all the radical, Salafist organizations in North Africa -- Moroccan, Libyan and Tunisian -- and, at the same time, to provide logistical support to the Iraqi networks," Bruguiere said.