Hole Under U.S. Embassy Fuels Italian Terror Probe
Sun Feb 24, 6:48 AM ET
By Crispian Balmer
ROME (Reuters) - Italian police have discovered a hole recently carved into an underground passageway next to the U.S. embassy and suspect terrorists were planning to plant a chemical bomb there, a judicial source said Sunday.
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The news came just days after police arrested four Moroccan men in possession of large quantities of a cyanide compound, explosive powder and maps of the water network around the U.S. embassy on the chic Via Veneto in the heart of Rome.
Immediately after the arrests, police and maintenance staff checked tunnels around the embassy complex that carry water, gas and electricity to buildings in the area and found a hole cut into a wall next to the diplomatic mission.
The hole was not there when the narrow channels were last checked in the second week of January, newspapers reported.
"An attack by an al Qaeda terrorist commando on the American embassy might have been just days away, or even hours away," the leading Italian daily Corriere della Sera said, quoting investigators.
Italian security forces have been on high alert since the September 11 attacks on the United States, and Washington has warned that Italy is especially vulnerable to a terror strike.
Police have seized more than 20 terror suspects in Italy over the past five months, but the arrest of the four Moroccans last Tuesday caused the most alarm.
DEADLY GAS
Scientists said the chemical compound found in their suburb apartment -- potassium ferrocyanide -- was harmless in itself but could easily have been turned into a deadly gas capable of killing large numbers of people.
A police explosives expert said there could have been many deaths if the substance had exploded under the embassy.
"A toxic cloud would have formed and spread through the tunnels under the center of Rome. They might have reached the air conditioning units of the embassy and other buildings," the expert, who declined to be named, told Rome's Il Messaggero newspaper.
The expert said a bomb might also have triggered a gas explosion.
"Worse still, the U.S. embassy has internal gas tanks which are supplied by the underground pipes. If the flames had moved along the pipes, the reservoirs would have gone up."
Security officials have maintained a news blackout since the Moroccans' arrest, and none of the prosecutors has so far spoken on the record about the case.
However, judicial sources say nine Moroccans are now in custody in connection with the case and are under investigation for planning terrorist attacks.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is working closely with the Italians to track the suspects' recent movements. They hope to establish whether the men had ties to Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al Qaeda network.
A court in Milan Friday sentenced four men with suspected links to bin Laden to up to five years in jail after finding them guilty of trading in false identity papers and of organizing illegal immigration.
The four were not charged with terror-related crimes, but police say one of the men, Essid Sami Ben Khemais, was sent to Europe by bin Laden to supervise attacks in Europe, including a foiled bombing of the U.S. embassy in Rome in early 2001.
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