Venice’s anti-terrorism police said in a statement Friday that they have issued 11 arrest warrants for 10 Turkish citizens and an Italian who allegedly supplied fighters to the PKK, which is considered a terrorist organization by the US and the European Union (EU). Another 16 people are under investigation.
The operation in Italy was concentrated in the northern cities, including Treviso, Pisa, Modena, Udine, Pordenone and Milan. Information discovered in a March 2009 search in Viterbo reportedly helped police in the recent operation. In the Viterbo search, police found a number of letters and a photograph which showed a Turkish man posing with a machine gun. The letters were later discovered to belong to a girl who had left the city to join the PKK.
Police reported that the investigation is being conducted alongside a parallel French probe and also involves police in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. The investigation, carried out in Italy and France, had discovered a “recruitment district” tasked with finding resources and people to fight against Turkish interests along the country’s border with Iraq, police said.
A young woman currently in French custody reportedly told French authorities that she had participated in an “ideological training course” in southern Italy where recruits were then told to go into battle against Turkey, the statement said.
Other such indoctrination courses were allegedly held in Pordenone and Pisano, where several of the wanted individuals were found at a farmhouse.
The one Italian arrested in the probe was Andrea Orlando, 41, who is already in prison on other charges. Police say they found fake Italian and French ID cards, instructions for making explosives, wires, chemicals and pro-Kurdish propaganda in Orlando’s Marseilles, France, apartment.
