Ten jihadists and other Arab nationals suspected of involvement in international terrorism have been identified in Greece over the past year following investigations by the Greek Intelligence Service and Greek police, raising concerns about their targets in Greece and other European countries.

Recently, two Pakistanis were arrested in Athens (on charges of preparing a terrorist attack in a place frequented by Jews) – writes the Greek press.

Many of these operations to detect armed foreigners have not been made public, the most important being the 2021-2022 operations, when two Syrians, an Algerian and an Iraqi were arrested after a systematic operation by Greek investigative authorities with the help of the Hellenic Information Service, but nothing about it is public .

Several ISIS members have returned to Europe since the carnage in the Middle East, but their intentions are unknown, other than trying to cover their tracks.

At the same time, there is concern about the re-emergence of “invisible lone wolves” who initially operated on the basis of religious fanaticism – mainly Sunni – and a desire to avenge the destruction of the “Islamic State”.

They seem to have been replaced, as recent arrests of foreign nationals in Zakynthos and Laconia show, by amateur Shiites who are not driven by fanaticism, but lured by rewards of tens of thousands of euros for each victim they inflict. Their coordinators are also their financiers who send money to relatives through a well-known money transfer company. The “attack and reward” command.

According to Europol, 260 jihadists were detained in Europe in 2021

Recently, there was only talk about the arrest of a 27-year-old Moroccan man in Thessaloniki and a 35-year-old Iraqi man in the center of Athens, who allegedly had ties to ISIS.

Before them, however, a 27-year-old jihadist from Syria was arrested at a detention center in Eleonas, believed to be involved in the mass killing of around 1,500 people – members of the Shaitat tribe – in August 2014 by the Islamic State. , as well as a 27-year-old citizen of Tajikistan who is listed as a “prominent ISIS member” in Tripoli. In addition, the Europol report states that in 2021, 260 jihadists were detained in Europe, four of which were in Greece.

However, there appear to have been a number of other arrests between 2021 and 2023 that have not been made public, in an attempt by authorities to head off the danger posed by “Islamic State fighters” returning from the Middle East for many years or via Greece.

The problem becomes particularly acute due to pressure from other countries and after the discovery that the jihadist “kamikaze” network, which bloodied France and Belgium in 2015-2016, entered Europe through the northern part of the Aegean Sea and lived for a long time in Attica (the region around Athens n.trans.).

From 2012 to 2016, more than 42,000 foreign fighters joined ISIS

Of these, approximately 5,000 are believed to originate from Europe. According to a previous Europol report, the rate of return of European ISIS fighters to their countries in previous years was low, around 25%-40%. But new documents indicate that there is an “invisible” return, based on forged documents, of European ISIS “fighters” with knowledge of the use of weapons and explosives.

It also found that around 11,000 ISIS members are being held in eight prisons inside Syria controlled mainly by Kurdish fighters, with around 9,000 from Syria and Iraq and another 2,000 from 50 other countries.

Finally, it is mentioned that every year during the massacre in the Middle East, and also after, the Greek police through the Schengen system conduct 700-950 surveillance operations on suspects, on the recommendation of foreign investigative services, most of them related to possible involvement in ISIS.