Italy/France – Al Qaeda

Two suspected Qaeda members arrested in Italy

Article published on the 2009-05-12 Latest update 2009-05-12 07:07 TU

Homepage of ribaat.org

Two French nationals suspected of being members of Al-Qaeda, have been charged in Italy with planning terrorist attacks on France’s Charles de Gaulle airport, according to the ANSA news agency. The two men were arrested in the southern Italian city of Bari.

The two men are Bassam Ayachi, 63, an imam from Syria who obtained French nationality, and Raphael Gendron, 34, a French citizen who converted to Islam.

In their file, magistrates Roberto Rossi and Francesca Romana, said the two had "planned and organised terrorist attacks and guerrilla actions."

Ayachi and Gendron were living in Belgium, and had been planning attacks in France and England, according to La Repubblica newspaper.

They were equipped with arms and explosives and had set up a recruiting network, including a website, to recruit people to go on suicide missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Investigators found electronic files with the two men pointing to their involvement in the site ribaat.org.

The two men had already been arrested in November 2008 when they were caught trying to smuggle illegal immigrants from Greece.

Gendron and Ayachi’s son, Abdel Rahman Ayachi, were convicted in 2006 in Belgium of inciting racial hatred for publishing anti-Semitic content on a website they ran out of the Belgian Islamic Centre.