According to Italian news agency ANSA, the suspects were apprehended in Umbria province's capital city of Terni, where police said the group was likely involved in an irregular immigration ring. The nine were among a list of 42 suspects wanted in the alleged immigration ring.
Last week, another Turkish national was arrested in Italy's northern Lombardy region after an international arrest warrant on charges of terrorism was issued for his arrest. Last week also saw the conviction of 24 suspects in a 12-year-long case investigating the leaders of the fundamentalist terrorist organization for their actions in southeastern Turkey in the 1990s.
The Turkish Hizbollah, which has no affiliation with the militant Lebanese group known as Hezbollah, was founded in southeastern Turkey in the 1980s. In the early 1990s, when the government's conflict with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) was at its fiercest, Hizbullah began attacking suspected PKK sympathizers. The group has mostly been inactive since the mid 1990s, when the group's top leaders were either killed or arrested in a major crackdown.
