Tunis museum attack: Moroccan accused demands house arrest

Milan, 29 May (IANS/AKI) Lawyers for Abdelmajid Touil, who was arrested in Italy over the March 18 attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunisia, have asked for house arrest for the Moroccan national, according to officials cited by the national news agency Ansa.

Touil should be given house arrest as there is no risk he will flee Italy because he came to the country to join his family, the lawyers said.

Touil has been transferred to Milan's Opera jail from the northern Italian city of Milan's medium-security San Vittore prison, according to sources cited by Ansa.

He was arrested on May 19 near Milan by Italian counter-terrorism police on an international warrant issued by Tunisia.

Prosecutors said the Tunisian warrant accused the 22-year-old of helping plot and execute the attack.

Tunisia has 40 days to supply Milan prosecutors with documentation and the extradition request, which the prosecutors have three months to examine, according to his lawyers.

At a preliminary hearing on 22 May, Touil professed his innocence over the Bardo museum gun attack which killed 22 people, mainly tourists, and injured 50, claiming he was in Italy at the time.

Touil's mother claims he was at their flat in Gaggiano near Milan on the date of the Bardo attack and his Italian language school confirmed he attended classes there in the days immediately before and after the attack.

He arrive in southern Italy in February aboard a migrant boat and has never left, according to Touil and his family.

The Islamic State claimed the Bardo assault, which Tunisia's authorities said was launched by the Okba Ibn Nafaa Brigade, a cell of 23 militants with overlapping allegiances to several jihadi groups.

Tunisian authorities are still searching for four Tunisians in connection with the Bardo attack, after they arrested a second Moroccan near the Libyan border this week.

--IANS/AKI

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