Italy arrests Muslim leaders

Three Muslim leaders suspected of plotting to bomb Milan's metro and Gothic cathedral have been detained in Italy, officials said yesterday.

Investigators believe the North African men planned to blow up the subway stop below the cathedral in December 2002 and also to bomb the cathedral in the nearby town of Cremona, according to the arrest order seen by Reuters.

The only reason the attacks were called off was because they were jeopardised by information leaks, the document said.

The chief prosecutor of Brescia, a northern city 95 kilometres from Milan, announced the arrests yesterday and said they had been made over the last two days.

"The timely and scrupulous decisions by Brescia's judicial system confirm the presence and the danger of Islamic terrorism in our country," said Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu, urging Italy not to underestimate the threat.

Arrest warrants had been issued for a total of five men from Morocco and Tunisia who served as religious leaders over the last decade in the Muslim community in the northern Italian city of Cremona, near both Brescia and Milan.

One of the five, a former imam of Cremona's mosque, is already in jail in Milan. Another is believed to have died in fighting in Afghanistan.

"The subversive cells have maintained themselves over time, working out of the mosque of Cremona and led by the successive imams," said Brescia's attorney general Giancarlo Tarquini.