Major terror ring disrupted in Italy, planned terror attack on The Vatican. The Daily Beast.

The Vatican. The Daily Beast/AFP/Getty. 

Italian anti-terror officials have disrupted a major terror ring in Sardinia, Italy, that was planning an attack on The Vatican. The Daily Beast. Two of the suspects had worked directly under Osama bin Laden and were still in contact with his family and his network. The terrorists had been using a former U.S./NATO base on the small island of La Maddalena, which had been abandoned in 2008. Many of the men arrested were involved in the human smuggling trade and forging documents and faking customs declarations. The attack on The Vatican was still in its planning stages and would have involved two suicide bombers.

My Comment:

Good work by the Italians. Breaking up this terror ring was very important. Had they carried out there attack on The Vatican, well, I don't know what would happen. There are about 1.2 billion Catholics in this world and every single one of them would have been furious, along with the entire population of Italy. I'm not Catholic but I would have been angry too, along with billions of other people. Though the attack probably wouldn't have killed too many people it would be a hugely significant attack just based on the symbolism alone.

And it is very possible that the Pope himself was the target of this attack. Pope Francis is a very popular Pope, even among non-Catholics. The impression I get of the man is of a strong yet caring leader that really does look out for the common people. I don't agree with him on a whole lot of things, but it seems clear to me that he is a good man. He also doesn't treat security the way that most world leaders do (and he is a world leader) because he wants to stay close to his people. That's extremely admirable, but it comes with incredible risk. He doesn't deserve to die and if terrorists were to kill him it would be the news story of the century. Thankfully this particular threat has been disrupted. 

So how big was the threat? That seems somewhat unclear. It sounded like many of the people arrested were more involved in human trafficking and financial crime. The island base on La Maddalena almost sounded like a retirement home or vacation resort for Al-Qaeda. From what I was able to gather it seems like the island is in a tourist trap area, which is an odd place to plan terror attacks from. 

My guess is that the terror attacks were a secondary objective for this base. If they were involved in human trafficking that tells me a lot about what they were doing there. I've posted several times how the entire Mediterranean Sea is in chaos due to thousands of immigrants trying to get to the European Union. There are millions of dollars to be made getting people from Africa to Europe. And Al-Qaeda can use that money to pay for terror attacks. 

This brings up another point. The immigration crisis in Europe is a huge security threat for everyone in the region. Not only are these migrants costing millions of dollars in terms of rescue operations and putting a massive burden on Europe's social safety net, they are giving Al-Qaeda yet another way to make money. And I am guessing at least a few of the immigrants are sympathetic to Al-Qaeda and other radical Muslim organizations. After all a bunch of them just drowned a large group of Christians...