(ANSA) - British officials will arrive in Rome next week to question Hamdi Issac, the Ethiopian who has admitted taking part in the failed bomb attacks in London, Italian judicial sources said on Friday.
Next Tuesday, British magistrate Sally Cullan and a Scotland Yard official will question Hamdi at Rome's Regina Coeli prison, where he has been held following his arrest in Rome last month.
It will be the first time that British officials have the chance to interrogate the self-proclaimed bomber.
The British team will be flanked by Italian judge Domenico Miceli and Hamdi's court-appointed defence lawyer Antonietta Sonnessa.
amdi is talking freely to Italian prosecutors about the failed July 21 attacks in London but British officers want their own information as they question the four main suspects held in Britain.
He is reported to have told them that the attacks were not meant to harm but to create terror. The attacks, he added, were in protest at the alleged repression of the Islamic community in Britain in the wake of the fatal July 7 bombing in London.
Judicial sources said on Friday that London had filed a request for an international rogatory to be able to question the would-be bomber in Rome pending his extradition to London under the new European arrest warrant.
The date for the extradition hearing has been set for August 17. A three-judge panel, headed by Miceli, is expected to issue its ruling on the same day, judicial sources said. Hamdi has let it be known he will oppose extradition and should Italy decide to hand him over to Britain, he will have the right to appeal to Italy's supreme court.
The European warrant, which recently came into effect, provides a means to fast-track extraditions within 90 days. Previously, they could take years. But British officials are concerned that the
extradition may be delayed because Italian antiterrorism prosecutors have opened their own probe to establish whether Hamdi's contacts in Italy amounted to a logistics operation supporting terrorists.
Hamdi was arrested on July 29 in Rome, at the home of his brother, Ramzi, who runs an Ethiopian clothing shop in the capital. Ramzi is also being held at Regina Coeli prison while a third brother, Fethi, is being detained in Brescia.
Chief prosecutor Franco Ionta has stressed that Italian prosecutors were obliged by law to pursue their probe from the moment they became aware that the bomber may have committed terrorist crimes in Italy too. This meant that the chief suspect had to remain in their custody. But Pietro Saviotti, the prosecutor in charge of Rome's antiterrorism team, made it clear on Thursday that the
Italian judiciary would in no way "hamper British justice."
Italian prosecutors may also be ready to wrap up their own investigations in time for the extradition hearing, Saviotti added. If they decide not to prosecute him, this would remove any obstacle in the way for Hamdi's extradition, the prosecutor said.
