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An Iraqi Terrorism Suspect Was Accused of Using 'Truffles' as a Codeword for Bombs

"I was talking about actual truffles," insisted Majid Mohamed, who was arrested in Italy last week on charges of obtaining false passports for 11 suspected militants.

Last week, police in the Italian city of Bari arrested an Iraqi man on charges of organizing the illegal entry into Europe of Middle Eastern and North African foreigners who have been linked to the Ansar al-Islam terrorist group.

The suspect, 45-year-old Majid Muhamad, is no stranger to these sorts of accusations. He was released in January from an Italian prison, where he served ten years on international terrorism charges. "He was a known terrorist," an official with the police's special operations division in Bari told the New York Times. The official noted that the investigation began after Muhamad was found to be in contact with a radical imam based in Brussels, who was later arrested and convicted of terrorism charges himself.

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But during the course of a three-hour interrogation with a magistrate last week, Muhamed denied being a jihadist. The Local reports that police accused him of using the word "truffles" as code for bombs in wiretapped conversations with suspected militants, during which he boasted of having two kilos of the fungi sent by his wife from Iraq.

"I was talking about actual truffles," Muhamed insisted.

In fact, Iraq is a rich source of truffles—not the stupendously expensive white Alba truffles, for which Italy is famed, but a separate family of truffles known as Terfeziaceae, or "desert truffles." Their aroma and flavor are not as pronounced as their European counterpart; they are also significantly cheaper, going anywhere from $30 to almost $300 per kilo, while Alba truffles can reach as high as $3,600 per kilo. One of the reasons for the still relatively high cost of the truffles, known as kamaa in Iraq, is the fact that they are often harvested in desert areas strewn with land mines. "It is very dangerous and people are killed every year if they don't stick to the designated paths," one truffle hunter from Basra told The National last year.

Truffles notwithstanding, things are not looking good for Muhamed's defense. According to the English-language Italian news site Ansa, Muhamad relocated to Bari after completing his prison term and met a group of Georgians, Moroccans, and Tunisians in a kebab shop. From there, officials say, Muhamad became involved in a network of suspected terrorists, including one who was arrested on his way to Greece after attempting to buy 20 plane tickets from Sulaymaniyah International Airport in Iraq to Paris. During a February raid on Muhamad's apartment in Bari, police allegedly confiscated postcards sent from prison, in which Muhamad praised holy war.

During last week's arrest, Muhamad was charged with obtaining false passports and organizing accommodation in Italy for 11 suspected militants from Pakistan, Egypt, Iran, Morocco, and Turkey. There's no word from Bari police on whether truffles or bombs were found among Mohamad's effects.