Word: tunisians
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...court in Sweden's capital Stockholm remanded Kerim Chatty in custody until Sept. 16 on suspicion of aggravated firearms offences and conspiring to hijack an airliner. If found guilty, the 29-year-old Swedish citizen faces a maximum term of life in prison. Chatty, whose father is Tunisian, was caught trying to board a flight to Britain with a loaded 6.5-mm pistol in his hand luggage. The case against Chatty was presented to Chief Prosecutor Thomas Haggstrom, who said: "What we still need is a motive." Chatty has a criminal record that includes an assault on a U.S. embassy...
...throng of protesters broke through the gates of the U.S. embassy. Another protester was killed in Alexandria, Egypt when police fired rubber bullets to stop a mob from marching on the city's American cultural center. In the most troubling incident to date, an apparent terrorist attack on the Tunisian island of Djerba targeted one of the last remnants of North Africa's 2,000-year-old Jewish community. The attack, which may have been timed to coincide with the start of the trial of five al-Qaeda suspects in Frankfurt, left 16 people dead, including 11 German tourists. Arab...
Italian authorities were alerted to such a scenario last March when they wiretapped a telephone conversation between a pair of suspected al-Qaeda operatives. In the conversation, Tunisian-born Essid Sami Ben Khemais detailed two ways to unleash an attack. One involved an unidentified "efficient" product that could be stored in tomato cans. When released, it would suffocate victims. At another point, Ben Khemais referred to a makeshift "gas bomb" whose "method," he said, had recently been refined by a Libyan professor...
...Khemais, also known as Saber, was convicted in Milan late last week of criminal association with the intent to obtain and transport arms, explosives and chemicals. In January, he was convicted in absentia by a Tunisian military court for belonging to a terrorist organization operating overseas. The conviction and five-year sentence for Ben Khemais, who is suspected of heading Osama bin Laden's European logistics operations from Milan, is the first guilty verdict in Europe related to al-Qaeda since Sept. 11. Three other Tunisians received sentences of up to five years from the Italian court...
Another troubling aspect of the case is the renewed interest in the U.S. embassy in Rome, which was closed for three days last January after the Tunisian secret service warned that an attack could be imminent. At the time, the shutdown took much of the embassy staff by surprise. The latest threat comes in a much different context, however, and the embassy remained open throughout the week. "We're keeping our spirits up," said one embassy official. Still, additional barricades could be seen around the palatial complex after the arrests had been made...