The Italian press featured reports yesterday of a sinister plan to destabilize Italy with terrorism and drugs, masterminded by the Communist bloc and employing Italian and Palestinian terrorist gangs, “Mideastern agents” from Syria and Lebanon, Libya and “the Egyptian faction which killed President Sadat.” The plot is also said to involve the Mafia which controls the narcotics traffic and the kidnapping racket.
Corriere Della Sera reported that a Syrian agent of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, arrested in Rome, came to Italy to “establish contacts with Italian terrorist groups, furnish arms and explosives, with the aim of creating uncontrollable chaos.”
The police in fact disclosed yesterday that the Syrian, identified as Nasry el-Tamj and a 25-year-old German woman, Brigitte Bagenoam, were apprehended at Fiumicino Airport on January 5 in possession of concealed explosives and false passports.
INVESTIGATING POSSIBLE LINKS
The police said news of the arrest was withheld until now to give West German authorities time to investigate a possible link between the pair and German neo-Nazis who may have been responsible for the bombing of an Israeli-owned restaurant in West Berlin on January 15. The suspects, Klaus Hubel and Franz-Joachim Bojarski, were arrested by Italian police in Avezzano last Tuesday.
Corriere Della Sera reported that another agent, Chady Ross Darviche, of Egyptian origin, is wanted for financing and arming leftist and neo-fascist extremists in Italy on orders “from a foreign power.” Darviche’s whereabouts are unknown.
Six Arabs, posing as students were expelled from Italy several days ago after they were discovered in Perugia with manuals on guerrilla warfare and the use of firearms and missiles. Although they had registered at the university, they attended no classes.
One of the six was identified as Mustafa Nasser, the official Palestine Liberation Organization repre- sentative in Perugia. Another, Mohammed Fuad, had been expelled from Italy last June but returned with a visa stamped by the Italian Embassy in Amman, Jordan.
JUDGE TRIES TO IMPLICATE ISRAEL
Ironically, the cases of Italian terrorist links with Palestinian and other Arab terrorists are being investigated by an Italian Magistrate, Ferdinando Imposimato, who was quoted in an interview in II Messaggerio last week as saying that Israel was trying to destabilize Italy so that the United States would have to rely on Israel as its only stable ally in the Mediterranean area.
Imposimato claimed that Israeli agents had offered to collaborate with the terrorist Red Brigade for that purpose. He said he had his information from two Red Brigade defectors who turned informers. Israel government sources dismissed the story as “too ridiculous to bear comment,” and an angry editorial in the Israeli daily Maariv was quoted by the Italian media. The judge’s allegations subsequently disappeared from the press.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
