An Italian police operation Friday targeted a group suspected of recruiting fighters for the militant separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party PKK group, officials said, according to dpa. Authorities in Venice issued 11 arrest warrants. By mid-morning at least five people had been detained, including four who were picked up at a farm near Pisa, in Tuscany. "The group focused on recruiting mostly young women who were then transferred to camps in Italy for ideological indoctrination and then abroad for training with weapons," Venice anti-terrorism police squad official, Diego Parente, told television news channel Sky TG24. The operation was being carried out in cooperation with French and German authorities, Parente said. Most of those arrested are believed to be ethnic Kurds, but one suspect was identified as an Italian far-left activist. The man was already in prison on charges stemming from 2006 when police in France apprehended him in a car carrying a machine-gun and other weapons. The PKK, formed in the late 1970s with the aim of creating an independent Kurdistan, has been engaged in an armed struggle against Turkey that has claimed thousands of lives. The organization is listed as a terrorist group by the European Union and the United States.
