Italian police are on the hunt for a North African migrant with connections to Islamic extremism who broke out of a deportation facility in Rome.
Three migrants broke out of the Ponte Galeria deportation centre over the weekend with police being alerted of their escape on Saturday morning. Police later captured Moroccan Falah Hamza and another unnamed migrant, but Tunisian Ibrahim Ghomed is still on the run.
Hamza, a known radical Islamic extremist, was taken back into custody just hours after his escape, Il Giornale reports. The newspaper stated that he was tracked down with the help of a local woman whose husband was familiar with the extremist.
Tunisian Ibrahim Ghomed, meanwhile, has managed to evade police and is also suspected of being a terrorist, according to investigators.
African authorities and Interpol alerted Italy to the extremist backgrounds of the three men. Italian police were then able to track down the three to the migrant centre and arrest them.
Following the recent terrorist attack in Nice that saw three people murdered by a Tunisian in a local church, it was revealed that the migrant, 21-year-old Brahim Aouissaoui, had come to Europe illegally, landing on the Italian island of Lampedusa.
He had also lived for a short time at a migrant centre in the city of Bari before he fled to France.
Populist Senator Matteo Salvini later criticised the leftist coalition government and questioned how many other potential terrorists had come into Europe illegally through Italy.
“How many are to disappear like him after landing? I think there are thousands of them. Yet there are mugshots and footprints of each of them,” Salvini said, the senator also calling for the resignation of Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.