Paris, 29 March 2023

“Two Pakistanis, aged 27 and 29, were arrested last night in Athens, following investigative cooperation between Israeli Mossad and Greek security forces,” stated Wiesenthal Centre’s Director for International Relations, Dr Shimon Samuels.

“According to sources, the two men were part of a terror network connected to Iran. They had already planned and were ready to carry out a murderous attack on Jews in Athens through the Passover.”

We recall some of the past attacks on Jews by Pakistani terrorists:

- The 2002 kidnapping and decapitation of journalist Daniel Pearl by Al Qaeda in Karachi, Pakistan;

- The 2008 attack on the “Nariman” Chabad House in Mumbai, India, by the Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamist terror group... Among the victims were Rabbi Gavriel Holzberg and his pregnant wife, Rivka;

- On that same night, combined attacks on several locations, including the Taj Mahal Hotel, left close to 170 killed and over 300 wounded.

Though the Jihadi group Lashkar-e-Taiba’s main focus had been the Indo-Pakistani dispute over the Kashmir region, in its charter, it had qualified the United States, India, and Israel as “existential enemies of Islam,” thus also targeting Jews...

The two men arrested in Athens had apparently been trained in Iran by professional terrorists... a third suspect seems to have evaded capture. Their designated objectives were the synagogue and a kosher restaurant, both would have been full during Passover.

Allegedly, a paper was found bearing the ominous message “€15,000 for each dead.”

“Greece is not a one-stop and can be repeated. In neighbouring Bulgaria, in 2012, a Franco-Lebanese suicide bomber – affiliated to Iran-backed Hezbollah – killed 5 Israeli tourists and the Bulgarian bus driver. The Iran danger can appear again anywhere in Europe,” concluded Samuels.

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