ATHENS, Dec 16: Pakistan’s interior minister on Friday said there was no evidence to substantiate claims by Pakistanis living in Athens that they were abducted and interrogated after the July bomb attacks in London, an incident which Greece insists never took place.
“Our embassy in Greece has not been informed by the plaintiffs or anyone on this issue,” Mr Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao told reporters at the end of a two-day visit to Athens.
Likewise, inquiries by Pakistan’s ambassador to Athens had so far yielded “no response, which means that no such incident has happened,” said Mr Sherpao, who was set to sign an agreement on Friday with Greece, Turkey and Iran to fight organized crime and illegal immigration.
On Wednesday, Greece’s public order minister George Voulgarakis had argued that the Pakistani migrants’ claims, which has embarrassed Athens amid a Europe-wide furore over clandestine CIA flights, was a “big misunderstanding”.
“If such an incident had happened we would know, nothing of the sort happened,” Voulgarakis said.
The Greek justice ministry has nevertheless undertaken to investigate a complaint filed in July by Javed Aslam, head of the Unity of Pakistan community association in Athens, who charged that seven of his fellow nationals were arrested without warrants, blindfolded and taken to a secret location for questioning.
“They were questioned about relatives of theirs resident in London, the case was evidently linked to the July attacks,” the Pakistanis’ Greek lawyer Frangiskos Ragoussis told AFP.
The Pakistanis were held at an unknown Athens location for up to a week, Aslam clained.
On July 7, four presumed Islamic militants, all British nationals killed themselves and 52 other people in bomb attacks on London underground trains and a city bus.
Aslam also claimed that British intelligence services were involved in the alleged abductions and that 28 Pakistani migrants in total were seized and interrogated.—AFP
