"The British sent a very long list of individuals  seen as being involved in the 7 July attacks"

As a result, in July and August 2005, 5,432 immigrants were  "questioned", 2,172 immigrants were "probed",  1,221 were arrested for "other reasons" (other presumably  than terrorism) and six of these were deported. The massive sweep  across Greece was carried out by over 1,000 law enforcement units  including state security, immigration and counter-terrorism officers.

The evidence presented to the Committee by the Minister was  that MI6 (the UK’s external intelligence agency or Secret Intelligence  Service, SIS) had sent a request to Athens about a specific Al-Qaeda  operative with a Greek mobile number (a number which had too  many digits and might have been a "cryptographic" code,  or simply wrong). A number of other Greek mobile numbers supposedly  linked to the suicide bombers of 7 July 2005 were also provided.

28 Pakistani men abducted, held in secret houses, questioned  and subjected to violence
Mr Voulgarakis said that none of the 28 Pakistani  men who say they were abducted were among those arrested in the  sweep last year – confirming that this was an intelligence not  a police operation. The men were abducted by plain-clothed security  agents – probably from the Greek national intelligence service,  EYP – from Athens, and from Oinofyta and Ioannina to the North.  One eyewitness said of seven of the men from Ioannina, "one  minute they were working on the farm then they disappeared for  a week".

Three of the men were interviewed by the Athens News  – Gul Nawaz, Mohammed Nazir and Mohammed Munir abducted from  their homes in Petralona, Athens. They were driven to a house  where they were interrogated, fed once a day and slept on the  floor for between two to six days before being released. Gul  Nawaz said:

"They covered our eyes by pulling our shirts over  our heads. They drove us blindfolded for about an hour and a  half – a long time…. Two times the policeman hit me. Then I  asked for some water and he punched me hard in the face. Later  he kicked me. They hit me four times"

Mohammed Munir said:

"They questioned me over five days, between  one and three hours each time. They asked me lots of questions  about London. They hit me very hard on the head."

Frangisko Ragousis, a lawyer representing seven of those abducted,  said that his clients’ testimony shows several foreign, English-speaking  agents were involved in the interrogations. Nawaz said one of  then was an English-speaking black man.

At a meeting in Athens on 19 January one of the lawyers said  that the men were under great pressure from the Pakistan Embassy  to withdraw their complaints. Frangisko Ragousis said that they  had been offered bribes to retract their statements.

Javed Aslan, President of the Pakistani Community in Greece,  said the men had been physically abused:

"There was a dark-skinned British [spy] who was apparently  in charge. One man was threatened with a pistol that was shoved  in his mouth, others were hit."

The Greek magazine Pro Thema broke the story in December  and named the MI6 head of station in Athens as well as 15 Greek  EYP agents – the accuracy of the latter appears to be confirmed  as the EYP said this endangered "the safety of its agents  in the field".

This reaction by the intelligence agency contrasted to that  of the police who said in December that they had only recently  received a formal complaints. In fact the the mens’ lawyers had  filed the complaints on 29 July 2005. It then took the prosecutor  until 29 September to order an investigation and which was not  recorded on the prosecutor’s office computer system until 18  November 2005. The Attica police were not handed the case until  2 December 2005.

Justice Minister, Anastasios Papaligouras, said that law enforcement  cooperation with the UK was based on a "1961 law" providing  for the exchange of evidence and court records. This appears  to be a reference to the 1959 Council of Europe European Convention  on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters (ratified by Greece  in 1962). However, this Convention in Article 1.2 says:

"This Convention does not apply to arrests"

The Convention applies to supplying evidence and records but  not arrests and certainly not detention for questioning.

Tony Bunyan, Statewatch editor, comments:

"The Public Order Minister confirmed that the 28 men  were not part of the massive sweep last summer. It was clearly  a separate intelligence agency operation carried out by EFY at  the behest of MI6. If they had been arrested the questioning  would have taken place at police stations where they would have  had the right to legal advice and regular meals etc.

They were not arrested but abducted by intelligence agents,  held incommunicado in secret houses, denied legal advice, and  in a number of cases suffered abuse and ill-treatment."

Background

 1. Protest  march on 28 Pakistani men abducted at behest of MI6
 2. MI6  Athens station chief named (Cryptome, link)
 3. MI6  officer linked to abductions in Athens hunt for Tube bombers (Guardian, link)
 4. Greece  urged to investigate MI6 torture link
 5. Athens  News  (link)
 6. 1959  CoE Convention on Mutual Assistnce in Criminal Matters (pdf)