A Tunisian man who is alleged to have carried out a “massacre” among illegal immigrants between Tunisia and Malta, and who is being actively sought by the Tunisian authorities, is now helping Italian investigators infiltrate al-Qaeda sympathisers in an Italian jail.

Writing in yesterday’s La Padania, the paper that supports Lega Nord, Roberto Fiorentini said the Tunisian, Chokri, has become a marked man inside the jail in Brescia where, now a “pentito”, he was placed in order to get information from Abdellah Errag, a Moroccan, and the former Imam of Cremona, Mouad Trabelsi, who is currently serving a 10-year jail sentence for acting as a front for terrorism.

Errag is accused of offering logistic help to a group that, in August 2005, was due to carry out two terrorist attacks in Rome and Venice with the help of 300kg of explosives.

In order to get the technical details right, Errag then got himself arrested for common crimes and ended up in Trabelsi’s cell.

According to La Padania, the most recent involvement of Errag, which has now led to various police investigations all over north Italy and the finding of pro-Jihad and terrorist propaganda material, was a series of intercepted phone calls by Errag in which he showed his real pro-terrorist leanings and his derision of the authorities for trying to infiltrate Chokri in the midst of Trabelsi and his colleagues.