Italy’s counter-terrorism police have arrested a 17-year-old girl of Egyptian origin who was planning a suicide bomb attack and had downloaded blueprints for making an explosive vest, while declaring herself ready for martyrdom “in the name of Allah.”
Police said that the alleged jihadi regularly frequented Islamist chatrooms and shared propaganda material linked to the Islamic State, including hymns glorifying martyrdom, recruitment videos, and manuals for manufacturing homemade weapons and explosives.
Nearly half of all Muslims under the age of 40 harbor Islamist views.
A state police press release said that the female was arrested on July 17 after investigators identified a suspicious user on an instant messaging platform who used a virtual phone number to frequent four restricted channels accessible only by invitation or with the administrator’s approval. The suspect cannot be named because she is under 18.
Police recovered digital conversations with peers, including foreigners and suspected Islamic State radicals, with whom the girl exchanged videos and other digital material and where, “on several occasions, she had explicitly expressed her desire for martyrdom in the name of Allah,” the press statement noted.
The juvenile prosecutor’s office said that the evidence gathered outlines “an advanced process of radicalization” and, above all, “the concrete possibility of imminent violent activation.”
The accused jihadi, who has been remanded in custody by the Milan Juvenile Court, resides in Villanterio, a municipality of 3,500 inhabitants, located in the province of Pavia, in Italy’s northern region of Lombardy.
Second Teenager Arrested in Northern Italy
On August 7, a police statement reported that a 16-year-old male from the province of Como was arrested in Grosseto, where he was on vacation with his family. Officials charged the teenager with participating in an international terrorist organization and disseminating propaganda and incitement to crime based on racial, ethnic, and religious discrimination.Police found several conversations and content attributable to jihadist propaganda, along with other neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic material.
Tunisian Minor Arrested for Downloading Explosives Manual
This isn’t the first time minors from the northern region of Italy have been detained for links to Islamist terrorism. In November 2025, police arrested a boy of Tunisian origin in Pavia who downloaded multiple manuals for manufacturing explosive devices using readily available household materials.
Police charged the suspect with participating in Islamic State activity and incitement to commit terrorism related crimes, aggravated by the use of computer and telecommunication devices. The boy had repeatedly expressed his desire to fight in an Islamist conflict zone.
The minor was also actively proselytizing within the radicalized network, convincing others, including minors, to swear allegiance to the Islamic State. Police also apprehended and searched a minor of Egyptian origin, who was part of the same group but residing in Milan.
Experts Warn of European Surge in Female/Child Jihadis
Counter-terrorism experts have issued repeated warnings about the propagandistic techniques used by Islamist terrorist groups to recruit female jihadis. In her book, Bombshell: Women and Terrorism, Mia Bloom warns that “the number of female terrorists and suicide bombers has increased several hundredfold in the past few years.”
Bloom predicts that “the women in Islamist organizations would increasingly be the focus of the next generation of Al Qaeda leaders” and writes that groups like ISIS are wooing women and girls via social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.
Problem in France
Europe is experiencing a surge in teenage jihadis, according to reports from multiple intelligence agencies. France now investigates more than one case of jihadi terrorism each week, reaching a new high since it created the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) in 2019.
PNAT officials warned of growing numbers of radicalized “child soldiers” participating in “Islamist-inspired crimes and offenses,” such as a 13-year-old girl’s foiled February plan to attack a synagogue or Shiite mosque, Focus on Western Islamism (FWI) reported.
PNAT began investigating 118 new cases between January 1, 2024, and November 27, 2025, coinciding with a rise in the number of jihadi “child soldiers” and young adults.
In 2025, the anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office charged 20 minors with Islamist terrorism, compared to 19 in 2024, 15 in 2023, and 2 in 2022. Seventy percent of those involved in jihadist violent action plans in 2024 and 2025 were under 22 years old. PNAT also arrested 130 minors with ties to the jihadist movement between 2023 and June 2025, with varying legal outcomes.
In March, a 17-year-old French-Turkish youth was arrested for planning a knife attack. In June, police arrested a 17-year-old French-Algerian for allegedly attempting a terrorist attack on Notre-Dame Cathedral, a nightclub, and a concert by the rapper Jul. In November, police arrested the ex-girlfriend of Salah Abdeslam, the mastermind behind the Bataclan theater massacre, for planning a jihadi attack with her new husband and a 17-year-old minor.
The most recent case involving minors saw the arrest on November 30 of two 16-year-olds, one of whom is Chechen, for threatening an attack on a synagogue. PNAT charged the pair with “participation in a terrorist criminal association to prepare one or more crimes against persons.”
Responding to a question from French parliamentarian Michèle Tabarot, Bruno Retailleau, France’s minister of the interior, confirmed that the proportion of minors among individuals actively monitored for Islamist terrorist activity has tripled, rising from 1.7 percent in 2020 to 5.6 percent.
Social Media a Problem
Intelligence agencies have also confirmed that extremist radicalization is taking place largely through the internet and social media.
“One of the key factors is, of course, the role of social media and its growing presence in the everyday lives of adolescents,” Yana Grinshpun, senior lecturer at the Sorbonne University and author of The Making of Contemporary Propaganda Discourse: How and Why Does it Work? told FWI. “More than 80 percent of young people in Europe use social media networks daily.”
“This global phenomenon creates an environment that can be exploited by a variety of ideological and propagandistic movements, including Islamist organizations, which have developed sophisticated strategies for disseminating propaganda across multiple communication channels,” Grinshpun, a researcher for the Transatlantic Institute for the Study of Contemporary Ideologies (TISCI), explained.
Former member of the Muslim Brotherhood Mohamed Louizi explains in his book Pourquoi j’ai quitté les Frères Musulmans (Why I Quit the Muslim Brotherhood) how the “organization has sought to use Europe as a space in which to disseminate and establish, over the long term, an Islamist narrative adapted to local cultural contexts,” Grinshpun observed.
Nearly half of all Muslims under the age of 40 harbor Islamist views, often driven by intensive engagement with online content created by artificial intelligence (AI) and messages broadcast on social media sites like Discord, Instagram, and TikTok, a German government-backed study revealed in April 2026.
Using AI, Islamist outlets can now quickly produce convincing extremist content in various ideological styles and formats, including text, images, spoken language, or videos. At the same time, simplified content increases the number of young people exposed to the propaganda.
