Alleged Tunisian terrorist arrested in southern Italy, reports say

BARI, Italy (AP) - Police arrested a Tunisian man Saturday who had been sought by Italian and French authorities for alleged links to Islamic terrorism, news reports said.

Bazaaoui Mondher Ben Mohsen, 35, was taken into custody by Italy's DIGOS anti-terrorism police in the southern city of Bari, the AGI news agency reported.

He was to be held in Bologna, where he was charged in 1998 with "criminal association" for allegedly supporting Islamic fighters in Bosnia, the agency said.

Authorities would not immediately confirm the arrest Saturday night.

The suspect had been arrested several times in France, and a Paris court sentenced him in absentia in 2001 to six years imprisonment for "criminal association with the aim of preparing a terrorist act," the ANSA news agency reported.

Further details on his case were not immediately available.

Italian authorities have arrested 35 people with alleged links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network. Also, 15 alleged Pakistani terrorists were arrested earlier this month on a ship off Sicily.

Seven Tunisians were convicted earlier this year in a Milan court of helping al-Qaida recruits get fake documents - the first al-Qaida-related guilty verdict since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Among those convicted was Essid Sami Ben Khemais, the alleged head of bin Laden's terrorist operations in Europe.

Italian police arrest alleged Tunisian militant

ROME, Sept 29 (Reuters) - Italian police have arrested a Tunisian man suspected of playing a leading role in a major Islamic militant network, security forces said at the weekend.

Newspapers reported on Sunday the man, named as Baazaoui Mondher Ben Mohsen, was suspected of trying to recruit potential suicide attackers during trips to Bosnia.

They said he was seen as a central figure in a sleeper cell set up by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda movement, accused by Washington of planning the September 11 attacks.

The 35-year-old Tunisian was seized on Saturday at a railway station in the southern Italian port city of Bari following a joint operation by three regional Italian police forces.

"Baazaoui was a fighter for a mujahideen unit during the ethnic conflict in Bosnia and is believed to be in the front row of fundamentalist, Islamic terrorist networks," the Italian police said in a statement on Saturday.

Muslims, Serbs and Croats fought a brutal war in the early 1990s which gave rise to the term "ethnic cleansing." Before that Muslims made up about 44 percent of Bosnia's population. No definitive census has been carried out since 1991.

The suspect had only recently returned from a trip to Bosnia at the time of his arrest and tried to pass himself off as an economic migrant looking for work in the West.

But local media said he was well known to the authorities and wanted for questioning in both Italy and France.

"We are certain he was continuing his work recruiting Islamic fundamentalists ready to die as kamikazes," Corriere della Sera newspaper quoted an anti-terror police source as saying.