A second Paris gunman has been confirmed as having entered Europe via Greece by posing as a refugee. Following reports on Saturday morning that one of the gunmen was found with a Syrian passport, Greek authorities quickly confirmed that he had entered via the island of Leros. A second terrorist is now reported to have used the same route.
Yesterday, Breitbart London reported that an unnamed gunman involved in the attack on various locations in Paris on Friday night which claimed at least 129 lives made his way to France via Greece, registering on the Greek island of Leros on the 3rd October. Greek police have now confirmed that a second gunman made the same journey weeks earlier in August, at the height of the migrant flow.
As the Greek security forces continue to work with the French authorities, it is possible that others amongst the ten terrorists responsible for the attack will be shown to have taken the same route, Greek news site Antenna has reported.
Greece has vowed to increase security measures following the attack, including increased surveillance of suspicious people passing through the country. The Ministry of Citizen Protection has also promised to stay in close contact with other European states and to maintain vigilance.
In a statement, The Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras stressed that it is “our duty to dismantle and directly isolate the terrorists.” He continued, “though our debt is to immediately stop the cycle of violence and war … our duty is to find a solution to the refugee problem, the drama of people who leave their homes fleeing from the terrorists themselves and drown in the Mediterranean Sea”.
This coming Tuesday, Britain is due to welcome the first of 20,000 Syrian refugees the government promised to rehome following European pressure to assist with the migrant crisis. A senior Home Office official has confirmed that the flight will “go ahead as planned,” insisting that security services had “vetting in place” to weed out any ISIS fanatics among them.
Meanwhile, The Times has reported a Whitehall source as saying: “We are aware of the Syrian passport and now the Greek angle. Those leads will be investigated.”
Confirmation that terrorists have indeed entered Europe via the migrant routes is a blow to liberal politicians who encouraged the migrant flow into Europe this year. One Facebook group, Labour Party Exposed, accused politicians, including the Green MP Caroline Lucas and Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, who had held up signs reading “refugees welcome” of having “blood on their hands”.
The German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has championed open borders and thrown open her country to migrants this year, is also under mounting pressure to alter her stance from within her own ruling coalition. As many as 1.5 million migrants are expected to arrive in Germany by the end of this year.
“We need to know who is travelling through our country,” Horst Seehofer, the Bavarian prime minister and leader of Merkel’s sister party, the Christian Social Union has said. “As well as more security measures, we need tighter control of the European borders, but also of the national borders.”
French media has named one of the attackers as Omar Ismaïl Mostefai, a 29-year-old from the southern Paris suburb of Courcouronnes. According to the Guardian, Mostefai was identified from a finger found at the Bataclan, which matched finger print records already in police files. Although Mostefai had a criminal record, he had not been previously linked to terrorism nor served time in jail.
His father and brother have been detained by police, although his brother told AFP before his detention that he had not had any contact with Mostefai for many years.