Three Algerians arrested in an anti-terrorist operation in southern Italy are suspected of being linked to a planned new series of attacks in the United States, interior minister Giuseppe Pisanu said Friday.
The attacks would have targeted ships, stadiums or railway stations in a bid to outdo the September 11 2001 strikes by al-Qaeda in New York and Washington which killed about 2 700 people, Pisanu said.
The Algerians, suspected of belonging to a cell established by an al-Qaeda-linked Algerian extremist organisation, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), were named as Achour Rabah, Tartaq Sami and Yasmine Bouhrama.
The first two were arrested on Friday in the Salerno area south of Naples, and in Curingia, in the southern Calabria region, respectively.
Bouhrama, 32, had been in jail in Naples since November 15 in connection with another investigation of the GSPC.
He is believed to be the head of the Salerno cell and to have liaised with other cells in Milan, Brescia and Naples.
The three in custody are also alleged to have procured false papers and funds to finance the GSPC, a hardline fundamentalist movement that rejects the Algerian government's attempt to draw a line under years of Islamist rebellion.
Pisanu said Friday's swoop was part of a wider operation involving other countries.
Links were uncovered between the GSPC's Italian activities and groups in Britain, the Italian news agency Ansa reported.
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