ROME, March 30 (Xinhua) -- A 19-year-old Moroccan man was arrested for incitement to terrorism, Italian police said Friday.
The suspect, a legal resident named as Ilyass Hadouz, was picked up in the town of Fossano near the northwestern city of Cuneo after surveillance showed he engaged in "intense jihadi propaganda" on social media, ANSA news agency reported.
National anti-mafia and anti-terrorism prosecutor Federico Cafiero de Raho told Il Mattino newspaper that the biggest threat in Italy is likely to come from so-called "home-grown terrorists" -- kids born in Italy of immigrant parents, who become sympathizers of extremists.
"We need to keep monitoring socially marginalized second-generation immigrants, who are the likely breeding ground for terrorist radicalization," Cafiero de Raho explained.
Such home-grown terrorists pose a greater threat to Italy than returning foreign fighters -- Europeans who went to fight in the ranks of so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq.
Cafiero De Raho estimated there are no more than 50 such returning foreign fighters in Italy, which is "considered more as a place of transit" to other European countries after the military defeat of IS in Syria and Iraq, Cafiero de Raho said.
Friday's operation follows on the arrest Thursday of five men with links to Anis Amri, the Tunisian terrorist who drove a hijacked lorry into a Christmas market in Berlin in December 2016, killing 12 people.
On Wednesday in the northern city of Turin, police arrested a 23-year-old Moroccan-Italian man who was allegedly plotting a truck bomb attack in the name of IS. On Tuesday, a 59-year-old Egyptian man was arrested for indoctrinating children with extremist ideology at an Islamic center in the southern city of Foggia, also in the name of IS.
Italy is on high security alert for the Easter holiday.
