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ROME — Two Japanese nationals were detained by Italian financial police last week after trying to enter Switzerland with $134 billion worth of undeclared U.S. bonds, mostly Treasury bonds, an Italian daily said Wednesday. The Japanese consulate general in Milan confirmed that the detention had taken place and said it was trying to confirm with Italian authorities whether the two were indeed Japanese nationals and their identities. According to the report in il Giornale, two unidentified Japanese in their 50s concealed the bonds, including 249 U.S. Treasury bonds each worth $500 million, in a suitcase with a false bottom that...

Since President Donald Trump took office, his administration has secured the release of 17 prisoners foreign governments had detained. “We’ve had 17 released, and we’re very proud of that record. Very proud. And we have others coming,” Trump said Saturday evening as he welcomed home Joshua Holt, an American citizen who had been detained in Venezuela for two years without trial. Unlike his predecessor, the president has managed to bring these prisoners home without freeing terrorists or paying millions of dollars in suspected ransom payments. 1. Sabrina De Sousa: Portuguese-American Sabrina De Sousa, a former CIA agent, was arrested and...

Former CIA case officer Sabrina De Sousa thanked the Trump administration for intervening to save her from extradition to Italy and imprisonment in a statement on Friday. “I want to extend my deepest appreciation to the Trump administration for all their efforts on my behalf. Without their support I would be spending tonight in an Italian prison,” said De Sousa, in a statement quoted by Fox News. “The Obama administration and former CIA Director John Brennan abandoned De Sousa the last seven years, and in six weeks, the Trump team made her freedom possible,” Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) told Fox...

Obama: We Need Courage to 'Seek Common Ground' Former President Barack Obama is traveling to Italy, where he will speak this week about food security and climate change. The former president is expected to go to Milan to meet with several Italians and discuss the issues. On Monday, the former president is scheduled to meet with former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. That evening, he will attend a private dinner held by the Institute for International Political Studies.

A former CIA counterterrorism officer who is set to be extradited to Italy where she faces a four-year prison sentence in connection with the rendition of a suspected terrorist that took place in Milan in 2003 said Hillary Clinton is partially to blame for her ordeal. Sabrina De Sousa, two-dozen other CIA officers, and an Air Force colonel were convicted in absentia in 2009 in Italy on kidnapping and other charges in connection with the abduction of Osama Mustapha Hassan Nasr, better known as Abu Omar, a radical Egyptian cleric whose fiery anti-American speeches in the immediate aftermath of 9/11...

Tyler S. Drumheller, a high-level CIA officer who publicly battled agency leaders over one of the most outlandish claims in the U.S. case for war with Iraq, died Aug. 2 at a hospital in Fairfax County. He was 63. The cause was complications from pancreatic cancer, said his wife, Linda Drumheller. Mr. Drumheller held posts in Africa and Europe over a 26-year career during which the CIA’s focus shifted from the Cold War to terrorist threats. He rose to prominent positions at CIA headquarters, serving as chief of the European division at a time when the agency was abducting al-Qaeda...

JP Morgan Chase, one of America’s leading banks, has closed down an account held by the Vatican bank at its Italian branch office in Milan. Neither the American bank nor the Vatican bank (formally known as the Institute for Religious Works, or IOR) offered any public comment on the move. But officials at JP Morgan Chase acknowledged that the IOR account was closed because of concerns about the possible use of the Vatican bank for money-laundering.

An appellate court in Milan upheld on Wednesday the conviction of 23 Americans charged with kidnapping an Egyptian cleric in 2003 and ordered even harsher sentences. All but one of the Americans are Central Intelligence Agency operatives.

IPT News June 9, 2010 SNIPPET: "The Turkish-based charity that helped drive last week's deadly confrontation with Israeli commandos has deep ties to Hamas and other terrorist groups. The Hamas ties are not in question. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and IHH officials simply do not acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist group." SNIPPET: "U.S. officials have expressed concern over the fact that "IHH representatives have met with senior Hamas officials in Turkey, Syria, and Gaza over the past three years," but IHH is not a designated terrorist organization in the United States. It's fair to ask, why not?"...

New York City-Based 'charity' Eyed in Terror Money Probe Feb. 26, 2004 By Tom Hays / Associated Press Writer NEW YORK (AP) - When Sheik Abdullah Satar visited mosques in Brooklyn and Manhattan in the waning days of 1999, the FBI was watching. An outspoken cleric and political figure in Yemen, Satar was put under 24-hour surveillance amid fears about possible terrorist attacks on New Year's Eve. The sheik was never arrested or charged with a crime. But five years later, his name has resurfaced in an investigation of the Brooklyn branch of an obscure charity - its address a...

prominent Yemeni sheik came to Brooklyn in 1999, raised money at mosques that was ostensibly for charity and then went to Italy, where he met with a top operative of Al Qaeda, according to federal prosecutors in Brooklyn.The sheik, Abdullah Satar, then made a speech in Italy calling upon people to join the jihad and denounced the United States for pursuing a terrorism suspect "to curry favor with the Jewish population and to project hatred upon Muslims,'' according to testimony of an F.B.I. agent at a trial of a New Jersey man in Federal District Court in Brooklyn that...

Milan, 13 Feb. (AKI) - Magistrates in Milan on Tuesday started questioning 15 alleged members of the leftist Red Brigades terror group a day after police arrested them on charges of planning attacks against the Milan home of conservative opposition leader and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi, his Mediaset group, the Sky group, right-wing daily Libero, Italy's main oil company ENI and jurist Pietro Ichino, a government consultant on labour reform. Meanwhile, on Tuesday morning Italy's largest circulation daily Corriere della Sera received threats in a phone call placed by alleged members of the terror group in response to the arrests....

Two Moroccans arrested in Italy yesterday wanted to blow up the Milan Cathedral on Christmas. They hoped an attack during the busy holiday would cost dozens of lives. This according to tapped phone calls, reports La Repubblica. The two belonged to an Islamic terror cell which had been followed by the Italian police already for months... Rachid Ilhami (31) and Abdelkader Ghafir (43) were arrested in Giussano, a city 25km away from Milan. The detectives gathered from tapped phone calls and confiscated computer files that the two also prepared attacks on a supermarket and a police bureau. They are arrested...

(ANSA) - Milan, December 2 - Two Moroccans arrested on Tuesday were planning terrorist attacks on targets in northern Italy after failing to make the ``necessary contacts`` to be sent abroad as jihad fighters, police said. Rachid Ilhami, 31, and Gafir Abdelkader, 42, are alleged to have been planning attacks on an immigration office and a police barracks in Milan as well as police stations, a supermarket and a night club carpark in smaller towns in the Lombardy region. Milan anti-terrorist unit chief Bruno Megale stressed that the pair were not ``an organic part of any organisation`` despite wiretapped conversations...

ROME (Reuters) - Italian police have arrested a man suspected of having links to arms trafficking and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network for travelling on a false passport, according to a police spokesman. Police acting on a tip-off, arrested Sanjivan Ruprah, 36, in the northern town of Cremona, outside Milan, on Friday. He was travelling on a false Belgian passport, the spokesman said on Saturday. "Sanjivan Ruprah is an internationally known figure," he said. "He is known as an international trafficker of arms and diamonds and has already been arrested in Belgium, from where he was released on bail."...

After Madrid, Terror Leader’s ‘Balkan Map’ Worries Italy Posted on Sunday, March 28 @ 13:20:00 EST by CDeliso Italian authorities are concerned about a possible link between the Madrid bombers, Al Qaeda and Bosnia, reports Croatia’s Slobodna Dalmacija newspaper. According to their investigation, mujahedin who participated in the Bosnian civil wars were imported from an al Qaeda training camp near Zenica to help with the bombings in Madrid, and other attacks possibly being planned for the future. “Their road was from Zenica through Split to Ancona,” says the paper, citing Italian authorities who point to the Balkan map found in...

A Muslim cleric has claimed to have been tortured with electric shocks, left in a cell where rats crawled on him and threatened with rape after he was allegedly kidnapped from a Milan street by CIA agents three years ago.The claims of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, appeared in an affidavit provided to Milan prosecutors investigating his alleged abduction in February 2003, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported yesterday. Prosecutors say that the cleric, who was formerly suspected of links to terrorism, was driven to the Aviano military air base and flown via Germany to...

Swiss police have arrested a man whom they suspect of belonging to an Algerian Islamic fundamentalist cell that financed terrorist attacks in Algeria. The Swiss Justice Office confirmed on Monday that a man detained last week on charges of counterfeiting documents was now ready to be extradited to Italy. Italian authorities, working in cooperation with the Swiss, said the Milan: based cell had raised at least ?1.62 million (SFr2.57 million). The Italians issued international arrest warrants for three suspects and charged two others already in prison for separate crimes. An Italian police statement on Monday said the cell "financed and...

NEW YORK - (KRT) - A prominent Yemeni cleric is suspected of raising money for terrorists at a Muslim charity and several mosques in Brooklyn, it was disclosed yesterday. An FBI agent pulled back the veil on a secret investigation of Sheikh Abdullah Satar at the trial of an associate who is charged with lying about the cleric's activities. The agent, Brian Murphy, said in Brooklyn Federal Court that Satar was under surveillance during a fund-raising swing through Brooklyn in early 2000. At the time, the feds were conducting an investigation into the financing of terrorist groups. After Satar -...

MILAN (Reuters) - A group of suspected Islamic militants arrested in Italy and Belgium may have been planning an attack on NATO headquarters or the European Parliament, Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera said on Wednesday. Quoting Italian investigators, Corriere said a suspected planner of the Madrid bombings in March -- among those arrested on Tuesday -- had intended to travel from Italy to Belgium possibly to take part in an attack on a "symbolic" target. Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, known as "Mohamed the Egyptian," was seized on Tuesday with a fellow suspect in Milan, and Belgian police, acting on information...