Court of Cassation, XX1 – XX2 – XX3 (n. 50189, 2017)

• 2017
• Italy

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Relevant links

• http://www.italgiure.giustizia.it/xway/application/nif/clean/hc.dll?verbo=attach&db=snpen&id=./20171103/snpen@s50@a2017@n50189@tS.clean.pdf

Facts

The three people reach from custody orders to prison and the arrested minor are all originary from Kosovo and are present in Italy with a residency permit. They are XX1, 24, XX2, 25, and XX3, 27, the last two residents in Venice, where they worked as waiters. They were arrested as part of an investigation coordinated by the District Anti-Mafia and Counter-Terrorism Prosecutor of Venice, for having participated in the international terrorist organization called ISIS, in order to commit terrorist acts both in Syrian territory and in Italy, constituting a cell of radicalized subjects dedicated to proselytizing the anti-Occidental jihad fought by the Islamic State, through the Internet, as well as through training and self-training. In particular, their goal was to carry out an attack on one of the most famous symbols of Venice, the Rialto Bridge. The details of the interceptions pointed out that the four Kosovars were engaged in a real self-training activity in order to prepare for criminal activities and attacks on the one hand through physical exercises and on the other hand by examining videos of the ISIS fundamentalists who explained the use of a knife to kill. It was also found that they performed simulations for packaged homemade explosives. There was a great adherence to the ISIS ideology and to the recent attacks. Those arrested met sympathizers and prayed. They sang at ISIS, talking about revolutionary ideology, and hypothesizing a series of attacks. The investigation started in 2016 when one of the suspects returned from a trip to Syria.

Legal grounds

Art. 270bis Code of Criminal Procedure "Associations with the purpose of terrorism also international or subversion of the democratic order".

Findings

The participation by adherence to a model of terrorist association built on an international scale, according to canons so precise in their finalization to jihad, as innate to the spontaneity activism of the individual operative cells, can be said to be based on the existence of a minimum organizational scheme characterized by a degree of effectiveness that makes it possible to implement the criminal program through terrorist violence. The crime referred to in Art. 270bis of the Code of Criminal Procedure is integrated in the presence of an organizational structure with a degree of effectiveness such as to make possible the implementation of the criminal program, although not requiring the case, for the purposes of its configurability, also the preparation of a program of terrorist actions. For the existence of the case in question, we need an organizational structure, even only rudimentary, and a purely ideological adherence, provided that it is characterized by a minimum seriousness of criminal terrorist intentions, without being necessary, given the nature of alleged danger of crime, that you have the beginning of material execution of the criminal program. With particular reference to Islamic ideological terrorism, it seems sufficient that the models of aggregation between sodals integrate the organizational minimum required for this purpose and have identified the associative characteristics in the case of "cellular" structures belonging to the Islamic associations, characterized from extreme internal flexibility, able to reshape according to the practical needs that, from time to time, occur, and in conditions to operate simultaneously in several states, or even at different times and with physical contacts, telephone, or at any distance between the adepts often characterized by marked sporadic, considering that the subjects can be enrolled from time to time, with a sort of progressive adhesion and enter, however, to become part of an already established association structure. Although, however, it is a crime of presumed danger, the anticipation of the punishment threshold cannot escape the evaluation of offensiveness in practice; it is therefore necessary a criminal organizational structure that aims at carrying out violent acts qualified by that purpose and has the capacity to give actual realization, not merely a proselytizing and indoctrination activity, aimed at inculcating a positive vision of the martyrdom for the Islamic cause and to acquire generic willingness to join the fighters in his name. In this case, the defendants, accused of being part of the international terrorist association called "ISIS", constantly met and lived in the same house, which became a base of support, a place of meeting and prayer, not only for members of the terrorist cell , but also for numerous other subjects of Islamic religion, were engaged in training activities aimed at carrying out terrorist actions, either directly physically training, or through the viewing of promotional videos in which they were given specific instructions for the manufacture and use of explosives by hand. Moreover, they expressed collectively their adherence to the jihadist ideology, praising martyrdom and other attacks against Western countries and their populations and showing a subdivision, albeit embryonic, of roles within the criminal organization. These elements, according to the judges, far from representing a mere psychological adhesion to the extremist jihadist ideology, instead, constituted the structure of a real associative crime with terrorist purposes of Islamic matrix, having realized a cell that was aimed at the possible, effective and concrete implementation of terrorist actions.