ATHENS, April 2: Four of the 28 Pakistanis, who claimed last year they had been abducted and mistreated in Greece, said on Sunday their embassy had tried to bribe them into withdrawing their complaints. The four men, who claimed they were detained in Greece following the July 2005 London underground and bus attacks, told a Greek newspaper that the embassy had paid them to change their story. “They gave us 5,000 euros ($6,060) and threatened to mistreat us to get us to withdraw our complaints,” Gul Nawaz told the Greek daily Ethnos.

Another man, Nazir Ahmed, said: “They gave me money... a few days later they made me swear on the Holy Quran to do what they told me.”

The two men initially withdrew their complaints. But last Wednesday they again testified before the prosecutor, and made their blackmail claims.

The men’s Greek lawyer, Frangiskos Ragoussis, has already criticised what he claimed was an attempt by the Pakistani authorities to bury the affair by ‘pressurising’ his clients by “illegally falsifying witness statements”.

The Greek judiciary opened a preliminary inquiry into the affair on Dec 13, 2005, after the 28 Pakistanis claimed they had been kidnapped, interrogated and in some cases mistreated last summer by Greek and British secret service agents looking for information on the London bombings.

—AFP