The Italian government capped off a long investigation yesterday with a series of 32 raids across Italy and one in Switzerland. Authorities arrested 15 alleged members of Anonymous and accused them with conducting denial of service attacks against government web sites and the web sites of private and state-owned media organizations.
The alleged Anonymous members are being held in separate locations around the country, and all are aged between 15 and 28. Five of those detained are minors, under the age of 18. The Italian police also said they are not done with their list of people to detain, and are looking for an additional 30 people they claim are in the group and are wanted on similar charges, including a 26-year-old whose handle is “Phre.” Italian authorities say Phre is the “leader” of the group.
Anonymous, for their part, has always maintained that the group has no “leader,” and re-iterated this point in their own statement on the arrests. AnonOps downplayed the arrests as a minor infraction, but called other Italian members of the group to conduct their own new attacks in retribution for the arrests. Their statement tells others to “Let them have it, stronger than ever.”
