Mosque Used as Jihad Training Camp in Italy

Italian police arrested three Moroccans—an imam and two of his aids—on charges of using the Ponte Felcino mosque in Perugia as a jihad training camp.

There were a number of educational opportunities available for members of the Religion of Peace...courses on hand-to-hand combat and weapons training as well as films and documents downloaded from the Internet teaching how to prepare and use poisons and explosives, pilot a Boeing 747 and send encrypted messages.

Police identified the imam as 41-year-old Korchi El Mostapha, and his two aides as Mohamed El Jari, 47, and Driss Safika, 46. A fourth Moroccan suspect is still being sought,but is believed to be out of the country.

Police also said in a statement that the suspects had contacts with two members of the Moroccan Islamic Combat group arrested around two years ago in Belgium. The Islamic group — known by its French acronym, GICM — has ties to al-Qaida and has been linked to the 2004 Madrid train bombings and 2003 attacks in Casablanca, Morocco.

The Italians have recently tightened their anti-terrorism laws and stepped up surveillance at mosques and Islamic centers.

Money Quote: Italian Interior Minister Giuliano Amato : "...the Perugia case confirms the need to always maintain high surveillance in locations where only religious activities should take place."

An interesting use of the term `places where only religious activities should take place'. One hears about churches, abbeys, synogogues and Buddhist temples as being hotbeds of terrorism nearly every day, right?

Just a little something to remember the next time you hear one of the mouthpieces from CAIR or the MPAC ranting about the notion of the US government putting mosques and Islamic centers under surveillance.

Sometimes these places aren't used for religious activities..and even more often, many of them have a very different definition of what constitutes `religious activities' than we would think.