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Italian Police Arrest Five For Planning U.S. Embassy Attack
ROME, April 5 (News Agencies) - Italy's anti-terrorist brigade has arrested five suspected members of alleged Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden's network who were planning to attack the U.S. embassy in Rome and the city of Strasbourg, France, police said Thursday.
They said the five, Algerian and Tunisian Muslims, were planning an attack on an unspecified target in the center of Strasbourg and were in liaison with another group that planned to attack the U.S. embassy in Rome.
Five other suspects managed to escape the police swoop and are being sought.
The U.S. embassy in Rome was closed for three days in January amid fears that an attack on the embassy was being planned.
The Strasbourg attack was foiled last December following the arrest in Frankfurt, Germany, of four people found in possession of arms and explosives and who were linked to a "cell" in Lombardy, northern Italy.
The Italian cell was in turn linked to another group that was preparing the attack on the U.S. embassy in Rome, police said.
In connection with the same investigation, German authorities Thursday arrested a suspected member of the same cell after multiple raids in the Hesse and Bavaria regions, the federal prosecutor's office in Karlsruhe said.
The suspect, identified as Samir K. and believed to be of Algerian nationality, was being brought before a federal judge Thursday, the statement said.
In Rome, Italian Interior Minister Enzo Bianco said the "mastermind" of an organization that was planning to strike in Europe had been eliminated. He did not elaborate.
Calling the operation that led to the arrest "brilliant", he said that it "was conducted with the assistance of other European police and the cooperation of U.S. police forces".
"We have identified a very dangerous group that was prepared to carry out terrorist acts" in any European country, he added.
Bianco said that more arrests could be made.
Milan prosecutor Stefano Dambruoso, who has been leading the investigation, also described the members of the Italian network as "very dangerous."
He said the Italian group's main activity was providing logistical support, chiefly by supplying apartments in Lombardy for "the big guns of Islamic international terrorism linked to Bin Laden."
Dambruoso said the group, operating out of Gallarate in northern Italy, also provided false work and residence permits for "terrorists" in Italy.
Investigators have reportedly also identified links between the group and paramilitary training camps in Afghanistan for mercenaries.
The U.S. embassy in Rome reopened after three days after a review of security.
Italian news agency Ansa at the time cited Italian security sources as saying that a group intended to launch a laser-guided missile attack on the embassy building on Rome's Via Veneto.
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