A 24-year-old Italian suspected of fighting in the Middle East since 2014 with al-Qaida-affiliated groups was arrested in Turkey and jailed in Italy, Italian police said on Wednesday.
The unnamed man, who had lived with his wife and their four children near the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib, agreed to hand himself over after being tracked down on accusations of terrorist activity in Syria and Iraq, police told a news conference according to a Reuters report.
“We managed to find him and bring him back to Italy … we were also able to get his wife and children out of a crisis area,” said Italy’s anti-terrorism agency Chief Diego Parente.
The man was transferred to Turkey’s southeastern province of Hatay and then on to jail in Italy, while his family remains in Turkey. The hunt began on information from his parents in Switzerland, where he had lived and was radicalized, police said.
Turkey has been carrying out extensive anti-terror operations at home and abroad to capture terrorists.
Al-Qaida-linked groups are active in Syria where the ongoing civil war led to the rise of Daesh, another terrorist group with a similar ideology.
Back in April 2020, the country froze the assets of three organizations linked to Daesh and al-Qaida terror groups in line with a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution.
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