Sunday, September 30, 2007

Iraqi Man Arrested in Italy for Plan to Target US Bases in Iraq

Via Yahoo! News -

ROME - An Iraqi allegedly linked to al-Qaida in Iraq and suspected of plotting a terrorist attack on U.S. bases there using ultra-light aircraft was arrested Friday in northern Italy, authorities said.

Saber Fadhil Hussien, 45, was arrested on international terrorism charges in a morning raid in Padua, Carabinieri paramilitary police said.

Hussien, a former member of ex-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, had been in touch with aides of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of al-Qaida in Iraq who was killed last year in a U.S. airstrike, said Col. Francesco D'Auria, head of the Carabinieri unit in Padua that conducted the investigation.

"It is documented that he was in contact with the al-Qaida in Iraq terrorist group," D'Auria told The Associated Press by telephone. "He was organizing an attack against American bases in Iraq."

The attack would have employed suicide bombers, anti-tank weapons and ultra-light helicopters that the group planned to buy from an Italian company, investigators said.

"These would have been used because they fly low and cannot be spotted by radar," D'Auria said.

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