Image: Italy’s Interior Minister Angelino Alfano speaks on events in Lampedusa, during an address to the lower house of the Italian Parliament in Rome October 4, 2013.. REUTERS/Remo Casilli
ROME (Reuters) – Italy has expelled a Moroccan man after investigations revealed he wanted to commit acts of terrorism and planned to travel to Syria, the interior minister said on Tuesday.
The 40-year-old, who had briefly acted as a Muslim cleric while living near the northern town of Padua, left Italy on a plane bound for Casablanca, Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said in a statement.
“I decided to expel him because … he showed a will to commit terrorist acts and the intention to go to conflict zones in Syria,” Alfano said.
Italy, which joined many other countries in raising its security alert after militants killed 130 people in Paris in November, has now expelled 65 suspected jihadists, Alfano said.
The Muslim community where the expelled man lived had distanced itself from him because of his fundamentalist and anti-western views, Alfano added.
(Reporting by Isla Binnie; editing by Ralph Boulton)
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