ROME (EJP)--- Two officials of an Islamic organisation in Italy have been accused of inciting racial hatred against Jews, press reports said Thursday.

Following an investigation by anti-terrorist police, Mohamed Nour Dachan, head of the Union of Islamic Communities and Organisations in Italy (UCOII), and Hamza Piccardo, his spokesman and the union's  secretary, have been summoned to a preliminary hearing in Rome next Wednesday, the daily Corriere della Sera reported.

UCOII published an advertisement in the Italian press last August 19 likening Israeli military operations to Nazi atrocities against the Jews.

The ad, which appeared during the Israeli war on Hezbollah in Lebanon, said: "Yesterday Nazi massacres, today Israeli massacres."

Piccardo wrote on UCOII’s Internet site that Israel was "born of ethnic cleansing and grew up and was reinforced by violence and injustice."

Critics Muslim organisations

The Internet post angered other Muslim organisations in Italy, which asked Interior Minister Giuliano Amato to bar UCOII from his ministry’s consultative group set up to facilitate communication with Muslims in Italy.

The imam of Milan’s mosque, Abdel Hamid Shaari described the ad as "senseless and offensive to an entire people."

UCOII spokesman Hamza Piccardi declared:”I am calm because the official notification of the investigation is a routine matter resulting from complaint by two MPs and magistrates cannot shelve such complaints," Piccardi was quoted as saying.

MPs Lucio Malan and Giorgio Stracquadanio of the of the conservative Forza Italia party led by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, last August lodged a complaint against the controversial UCOII newspaper ad with magistrates.

The MPs claimed the ad contravened Italy’s racial hatred legislation and stoked "racial hatred towards Israel and Jews in general by comparing its behaviour to the cruellest and bloodiest acts of the regime of which they were victims."

UCOII was founded in 1990 and claims to be directly connected to approximately 240 mosques in Italy and to dozens of Islamic centres across Italy, including Milan’s Islamic Centre.