Italy: Police Arrest 16-Year-Old Caught in Possession of Jihadist Material

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Italian police officers from the city of Verona on Wednesday arrested a 16-year-old minor resident of Bologna caught in possession of jihadist material and other terrorist-related content.

Verona’s Questura  state police headquarters informed that the arrest of the unidentified 16 year-old minor stems from an investigation launched in fall 2025 with the support from Bologna law enforcement personnel.

The investigation, the police said, was part of routine law enforcement efforts to monitor “supremacist online channels, where one internet user in particular stood out for having published manuals on carrying out violent acts using heavy vehicles and a numbered list of tips aimed at ensuring anonymity on the web.”

Per the Verona police, subsequent investigative developments led to the identification of the account holder as the now-arrested 16 year-old minor, confirming his residence in Bologna. Rai News reports that the unidentified minor remains detained a temporarily detention center in Ancona. Local judicial authorities upheld the arrest, and imposed a two-month ban on the minor’s use of electronic devices and access to the internet.

“During the search of the minor’s home, several handwritten A4-sized sheets containing drawings, symbols, and emblems associated with white supremacist ideology were found, as well as a typewritten page with instructions for making a homemade bulletproof vest,” the Verona police said.

“An in-depth analysis of the young man’s smartphone revealed a significant amount of content of investigative interest,” the statement continued. “Specifically, in addition to various pieces of white supremacist and jihadist propaganda, investigators seized manuals for the manufacture of homemade weapons, a manual for building a handgun, a text translated from Cyrillic containing instructions on corrosive chemicals, and a manual for assembling homemade explosive devices.”

The Verona Questura noted that, during the operation, investigators also discovered a full copy of the video of the 2019 Christchurch  massacre , accompanied by messages “in which the perpetrator of the massacre was held up as a role model.”

Additionally, the Verona police detailed that investigators found plans to “reestablish clandestine organizations within the country” among the minor’s intercepted conversations. The messages, the police said, contained references to the use of homemade weapons and violent actions against specific groups of people, including “influential judges and journalists.”

“The findings of the investigation appear to indicate a convergence between content linked to white supremacist extremism and jihadist propaganda, a phenomenon that counterterrorism experts refer to as ‘white jihad,’ characterized by the convergence of ideologies that are seemingly distant but united by their glorification of violence as a means of ideological assertion,” the Verona police said.

The arrest of an unidentified 16 year-old minor caught in possession of jihadist material by Italian police officers occurs weeks after the arrest of 21 year-old Zakaria Ben Haddi, a man born in Vimercate, Brianza to migrant parents from Morocco. Ben Haddi was arrested by order of the Milan Public Prosecutor’s office after an investigation found him to be the author of social media posts “glorying Martyrdom” and the promotion of terrorism and attacks by radical Islam against the West and Christianity.

Other social media content published by Ben Haddi further suggested that he planned to carry out a terrorist attack in Italy similar to May 15 car-ramming  attack  in Modena, carried out by 31 year-old Salim El Koudri.