Saturday, November 12, 2022

Italy: Additional Terror Charges for ISIS Prisoner

Like most Western countries, Italy is having to deal with the problem of dealing with its own citizens/residents who went off to Syria and Iraq to fight on behalf of ISIS. The below article from Il Tempo describes Samir Bougana, a Moroccan-Italian, who left to join ISIS in Syria and is serving a 4-year sentence in Italy. He is now charged in Brescia (near Milan) with additional counts of torture against Yazisis.

The article is translated by Fousesquawk.

 https://www.iltempo.it/attualita/2022/11/12/news/foreign-fighter-italiano-samir-bougana-brescia-origini-marocchine-tortura-soldato-isis-33831264/

Italian foreign fighter arrested for torture: He is a soldier for ISIS"

12 November 2022

Brescia police have executed a preventative custody in prison measure issued by an investigating judge in Brescia for 28-year-old Samir Bougana, Italian foreign fighter, born in Brescia, and of Moroccan origin. The man is accused of "kidnapping and personal injuries, aggravated by the use of torture and acting with cruelty as well as terrorism and racial hatred." Bougana, born in Gavardo (Brescia), of a Moroccan family, is currently detained in the prison of Sassari (Sardinia), where he is serving a sentence of 4 years for terrorism and has been (served) with a new order of preventative custody. In 2010, he moved to Germany and then to Syria in 2015 with the woman who then became his wife.

After having joined Islamic Jihad, Bougana left for Syria where he became a soldier of ISIS. Captured by the Kurdish Peoples' Protection Unit in 2019, he was taken to Kobane (Syria) where he was placed under arrest by Digos (Italian Security) of Brescia and by the Central Directorate of Prevention Police, at the conclusion of an operation conducted in close cooperation with Aise, the FBI, and Syrian authorities and charged with association for the purpose of terrorism.

After a radical ideological adherence to Islamic Jihad, begun in Italy and continued in Germany, he left for Syria. In July 2020, the Tribunal of Brescia sentenced him to 4 years imprisonment, a sentence later confirmed under appeal. The investigations, however, led to identifying other episodes for which the 28-year-old was responsible. In fact, responsibility reportedly emerged for the foreign fighter, who allegedly inflicted torture upon at least two persons, among them, an adolescent who had refused to fight for ISIS, and who is currently a refugee in Germany.  The testimony of one of the victims of the torture, was taken in Dusseldorf by the prosecutor assigned to the investigations, officials of the Central Directorate of Preventative Police, and Digos of Brescia. The witness, in fact, also told of torture perpetrated with electric shocks against Kurdish detainees belonging to the Yazidi minority to force them into conversion to Islam.



No comments:

Post a Comment