According to the report, – based on court documents obtained and public statements by government officials – a Pakistani man from Iran named Sayed Abbas recruited an old acquaintance living in Greece and guided him to act, investigators say in documents submitted to the judicial authorities in the case.
Abbas told his contact that he worked for a group that would pay around 15,000 euros for each kill.
In a WhatsApp message exchange in January 2023, which is detailed in the documents, the two men discussed whether to proceed with arson or an explosion in the attack. Abbas stressed the need to provide proof of losses after the strike. “There are secret services” involved, he said, without naming names. “Do the job in a way that leaves no room for complaints from them,” it read.
The previously unpublished documents include hundreds of pages of evidence gathered during the Greek pre-trial investigation, including witness statements, police statements and WhatsApp messages. They purportedly show how Abbas was grooming his liaison, a slim Pakistani compatriot named Syed Irtaz Haider.
Greek authorities arrested Haider and another Pakistani last year, saying they were “disrupting a terrorist network that was directed from abroad and intended to cause human casualties.” The two men face terrorism-related charges.
Hyder, who was released this spring on parole, says he is innocent. In an interview, the 28-year-old told Reuters that he had sent Abbas images of the building but deliberately delayed carrying out any attack, hoping to get paid without harming anyone.
The Mossad, which assisted the Greek investigation, said the planned attack was orchestrated by Iran as part of a multinational network operated from Iran. The Israeli government declined to comment on the case or other Mossad activities.
Hired killers
“Some governments are reticent to publicly denounce Iran for diplomatic reasons,” said Matthew Levitt, director of the counterterrorism program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank.
Mossad director David Barnea said last year that during 2023, Israeli intelligence worked with other agencies to dismantle 27 groups that tried to organize attacks abroad, which were led by Iran.
In the United States, there have been at least five assassination or kidnapping cases allegedly linked to Iran. All three involved assassination plots by contract killers.
According to the report, Abbas contacted Haider from Iran in 2020. Haider was living in Greece as an undocumented immigrant, according to records seen by Reuters. Haider told Reuters the two knew each other from their hometowns. Both hailed from the same town in the Punjab province of eastern Pakistan. Both are Shiite Muslims, he told Greek authorities.
Haider studied engineering in Pakistan and arrived in Greece in 2019, he told Reuters. He settled in Zakynthos and lived in an apartment building with other Pakistanis. He found work in an olive grove and did other seasonal jobs.
Abbas was also from Pakistan. Authorities there suspect him of masterminding a kidnapping and murder in October 2021, according to a police official working in Punjab province.
Greek police identified in the documents an Instagram account under the name Shani Shah Sherazi, which they say belongs to Abbas. The last post on the account was made in mid-October 2021.
Abbas, a married father of two, crossed into Iran by road in February 2022 and has not returned, a Punjab intelligence official told Reuters.
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After his arrival in Iran Abbas recruited Haider. By April 2022, the two were communicating via WhatsApp, according to Haider’s statement to investigators and messages detailed in legal documents.
In an exchange of WhatsApp messages in November 2022, the two men discussed targets and methods of deadly attacks. Abbas told Haider to stress to other potential recruits what the group was willing to pay: “The pay per head is five million rupees” – about €16,000 at the time.
The men often discussed money. Haider was pressuring Abbas to send money, according to WhatsApp records. Abbas complained in December 2022 that he could not pay his rent and had to borrow cash. “When the job is done, for the rest of our lives, we will never want money again,” Abbas wrote to Haider that month.
Staged murder
Towards the end of 2022, Abbas pressured Haider to send images of the Habad restaurant in Athens. The two-story building, on a side street in a busy part of the capital, houses the Jewish center, which has a prayer room and a Kosher restaurant.
Heinder enlisted the help of the third suspect to provide him with photos and videos of the building in December 2022, the man testified to the investigator. The third suspect also told authorities he did not know the building was a Jewish center. The third man said Haider later conveyed Abbas’s offer to pay for the killings, which he immediately refused.
In early January 2023, Heinder traveled to Athens and recorded video from Habad in Athens and the surrounding area, he testified. Forwarding the material to Abbas, Haider described the area as full of shops and tourists. Abbas responded by saying “good job”.
Their methods were at times amateurish.
Haider staged a fake assassination in an apparent attempt to trick Abbas and his bosses. While in Athens, Hyder convinced a man of Nepali origin to play the role of the victim in a mock execution, promising to pay him 2,500 euros, according to the Nepalese man’s testimony contained in the documents. Hyder dressed him in blood-stained clothes, he said, from a slaughtered goat, then told him to lie on the floor and pretend to be dead so Hyder could videotape him, the man testified.
Pressure
By the second week of January 2023, Abbas and Haider were focused on the Chabad of Athens restaurant, investigators say in the documents, with Abbas proposing to set fire to the lodge, the messages said.
“Whatever you can, do it quickly, I won’t be given much time,” Abbas wrote on January 9. “It will, I promise,” replied Heider.
Within weeks, the authorities took action. Acting on an anonymous tip, the Greek police searched Heider’s apartment and arrested him for possession of forged identity documents. Prosecutors charged him with terrorism the following month. In his testimony after his arrest, Haider described the group into which Abbas recruited him as a large but anonymous organization based in Iran.
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