Italian arrested for spreading ISIS propaganda, saying Allah sent COVID

From the long-established Italian co-operative newswire ANSA and the National, English language newspaper of the Middle East. Photograph from Tuscia web

MILAN, JUL 8 – A 38-year-old Italian man was arrested in Milan Wednesday for spreading ISIS propaganda and saying Allah sent to COVID pandemic.     Nicola Ferrara is originally from Bari in Puglia but now lives in Milan where he was detained. He is believed to have been radicalised in 2015 and been in contact with other extremists on online.

He allegedly urged social media followers to embrace global jihad against all infidels, police said. In an intercept on March 27, police said, the man claimed that the COVID emergency “is something from Allah, a positive thing”, because “people are going mad”.

The man allegedly argued that the crisis had helped cure people of “vices”. Among the images he spread online were pictures of the former Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, deceased ISIS chief Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, and photographs of New York’s Twin Towers that were destroyed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, women carrying machine guns and children using extremist language.