ROME, Jan. 23 (Xinhua) -- Italy has arrested a citizen for spreading terrorist propaganda on social media, police in the southern region of Sicily announced Wednesday.
"DIGOS (anti-terrorism unit) arrested a 32-year-old for apology of terrorism," police tweeted. "After converting to Islam in 2011, the man instigated others to commit acts of terrorism via social networks."
Apology of terrorism is an offense in some countries for defending or inciting terrorism.
The man had been recruited to the Jihadi cause by another young man who was "strongly radicalized" and wiretaps revealed that soon after he was abandoned by his live-in girlfriend, the suspect displayed "a marked, unequivocal and single-minded fixation on Islamist ideology," police said in a televised statement.
In 2015, police arrested four members of an Italian family -- two sisters and their elderly parents -- who had converted to Islam and sought to join the so-called Islamic State (IS) terrorist group in the Middle East.
They were charged with international terrorism and were "determined to take part in jihad in Syria," police said in a July 2015 statement.
One of the Italian sisters and her Albanian husband were sentenced to nine and 10 years in prison, respectively. The other sister got five years and the father was sentenced to four years, while the mother died during the trial, according to Italian news agency ANSA.
