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Detained imam ‘planned terror attack at Rome’s main station’

UPDATED: A 22-year-old man arrested in the central Molise region on Wednesday was allegedly planning a terror attack at Rome’s main train station, Termini.

Published: 10 March 2016 09:58 CET
Updated: 10 March 2016 12:00 CET

Detained imam 'planned terror attack at Rome’s main station'

The imam was allegedly planning an attack in Rome, with a train station being a possible target. Photo: Filippo Monteforte/AFP

The imam and asylum seeker, from Somalia, was detained at a refugee centre near the city of Campobasso after a two-month investigation during which he was recorded saying “let’s start from Italy, let’s go to Rome and start with the station”.

He was also heard saying that “Charlie Hebdo was just the beginning, the war continues”, Corriere reported.

Investigators believe he was planning to leave the refugee centre in Campomarino on Wednesday and head to Rome.

The man is said to have supported the Isis extremist group and tried to encourage migrants staying at the centre in Campomarino to join the jihadist cause.

Police said the imam, who also praised the November 13th Paris attacks, held services in the centre, but that some worshippers walked out after being alarmed by his preaching.

Police used phone tapping and hidden cameras during their two-month investigation. The camera showed the man watching videos of terrorist attacks, police said.

Surgeon fined for trying to sell Paris terror attack victim's x-ray

Found guilty of violating medical secrecy, renowned orthopaedic surgeon Emmanuel Masmejean must pay the victim €5,000 or face two months in jail, judges ordered.

Masmejean, who works at the Georges-Pompidou hospital in western Paris, posted the image of a young woman’s forearm penetrated by a Kalashnikov bullet on marketplace Opensea in late 2021.

The site allows its roughly 20 million users to trade non-fungible tokens (NFTs) – certificates of ownership of an artwork that are stored on a “blockchain” similar to the technology used to secure cryptocurrencies.

In the file’s description, the surgeon wrote that the young woman he had operated on had “lost her boyfriend in the attack” on the Bataclan concert hall, the focus of the November 2015 gun and bomb assault in which jihadists killed 130 people.

The X-Ray image never sold for the asking price of $2,776, and was removed from Opensea after being revealed by investigative website Mediapart in January.

Masmejean claimed at a September court hearing that he had been carrying out an “experiment” by putting a “striking and historic medical image” online – while acknowledging that it had been “idiocy, a mistake, a blunder”.

The court did not find him guilty of two further charges of abuse of personal data and illegally revealing harmful personal information.

Nor was he barred from practicing as prosecutors had urged, with the lead judge saying it would be “disproportionate and inappropriate” to inflict such a “social death” on the doctor.

The victim’s lawyer Elodie Abraham complained of a “politically correct” judgement.

“It doesn’t bother anyone that there’s been such a flagrant breach of medical secrecy. It’s not a good message for doctors,” Abraham said.

Neither Masmejean, who has been suspended from his hospital job, nor the victim were present for Wednesday’s ruling.

The surgeon may yet face professional consequences after appearing before the French medical association in September, his lawyer Ivan Terel said.

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