ROME- An anti-terrorism operation carried out by the police in Brescia, North Italy, has led to the arrest of two people suspected of supporting the Islamic radical group ISIS on Wednesday, Italian police said. The investigations, conducted by the Digos branch of the Milan police and the polizia postale, the Italian postal and telecommunications police, have revealed that the two ISIS supporters were publically inciting terrorist activity online.

The two arrested, who come from Tunisia and Pakistan, created a Twitter account called ‘Islamic_State in Roma’, and were planning terrorist attacks. Investigators discovered for example that the two had spoken about attacking the Ghidi military base in the Brescia province.

According to investigators, the two were publishing photos on the social media platform with threatening handwritten messages held up on scrap paper such as “We are on your streets” and “We are everywhere” in Italian, Arabic and French, signed off with the Islamic State symbol. In the background would be famous landmarks in Rome or Milan, such as the Duomo, the Colosseum, or Milan train station, implying that they would be targeted by the Islamic State. In one of the photos appeared the name of Omar Moktar, former Al Qaeda leader who was also a famous Libyan hero, having led the anticolonial war against the Italians in the 1920s.

The two were legal Italian citizens, with the correct documentation, and had lived in the country for many years in the Brescia province with one working as a manual labourer, and the other in the cleaning industry. The investigation was carried out swiftly, underway just three months after the first reports were filed by the polizia postale concerning the Twitter messages, which had been published on the social platform on April 26.

 Interior minister Angelino Alfano congratulated police forces, and tweeted that “our policing system has proven its effectiveness once again” on the social media platform just hours after the arrest of the two ISIS supporters in Brescia.