Rome--Italy said Wednesday it had arrested a Moroccan illegal immigrant suspected of involvement in a deadly attack on a Tunis museum, fuelling a row over the threat of jihadists arriving in Europe by boat.
Authorities in Tunisia have arrested nearly two dozen suspects in connection with the March attack in which 21 tourists died, but Abdel Majid Touil, 22, was thought to be the first to be detained abroad.
Touil, who was wanted for premeditated murder, kidnapping and terrorism according to the police, was detained on Tuesday evening on an international warrant by Italy's anti-terrorism DIGOS police in the northern town of Gaggiano.
He had arrived in Italy in February on a migrant boat and was living with his mother and two older brothers, who are legally resident in the town near Milan.
Police seized papers and USB flash drives from his house.
The attack on the Bardo National Museum on March 18 left 24 people dead: two gunmen, a Tunisian policeman and tourists from Italy, Japan, France, Spain, Colombia, Australia, Britain, Belgium, Poland and Russia.
Visitors getting off buses outside the museum were gunned down by two black-clad shooters with automatic weapons, who then took hostages inside the building.
Many people were shot in the back as they tried to escape. After rampaging through the museum for several hours, the gunmen were killed in an assault by security forces.
At the end of March, Tunisian forces killed nine suspected members of a jihadist group accused of being behind the shooting, the Okba Ibn Nafaa Brigade, including an Algerian who allegedly masterminded the attack.
AFP
