Italian police strike at Turkish leftist group

international | crime and justice | news report Thursday April 01, 2004 14:30 by mise

Irish times

Italian police have arrested five people suspected of having links to a far-left Turkish militant group in the central Italian city of Perugia.

Prosecutors in Peerugia orchestrated the early morning swoop on the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), which is not connected to radical Islamist groups.

Police said raids were also conducted this morning in Turkey and the Netherlands at the request of Italian investigators. A police source in the Netherlands said a raid took place there but no arrests were made. There was no immediate word from Turkey.

"We are not dealing with Islamists. What we have here is a very strong organisation, the DHKP-C, which has a strong Marxist-Leninist tradition," said Giampaolo Ganzer, commander of the crack "Ros" unit of the Carabinieri paramilitary police.

"They have links with anti-imperialist groups in Italy," he said.

Police said five arrests had been made in Italy with further arrest warrants issued for suspects living abroad.

The DHKP-C is the largest of Turkey's far-left factions.

Last year it claimed responsibility for small bomb blasts on a McDonald's restaurant and a state-run hotel in Istanbul, which it said were a protest against the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Nobody was hurt in those attacks.

The DHKP-C also said it carried out a suicide bomb attack in September 2001 in Istanbul that killed two police officers and an Australian tourist, as well as the bomber.