Poland Thwarts Planned Attacks on Muslims

Police officers investigate the site of a stabbing in Warsaw, Poland, April 11, 2019. Agencja Gazeta/Adam Stepien via REUTERS
Police officers investigate the site of a stabbing in Warsaw, Poland, April 11, 2019. Agencja Gazeta/Adam Stepien via REUTERS
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Poland Thwarts Planned Attacks on Muslims

Police officers investigate the site of a stabbing in Warsaw, Poland, April 11, 2019. Agencja Gazeta/Adam Stepien via REUTERS
Police officers investigate the site of a stabbing in Warsaw, Poland, April 11, 2019. Agencja Gazeta/Adam Stepien via REUTERS

Two members of an "extremist group" suspected of planning bomb and gun attacks on Muslims have been arrested in Poland, the security services announced Wednesday.

Officers arrested the two suspects in Warsaw and in the northwest city of Szczecin, Stanislaw Zaryn, of the country's internal security service (ABW), told Agence France Presse.

They seized chemicals that could have been used to make large quantities of explosives after searching locations in the center, south and northwest of the country.

"The arrests are the result of an intelligence-gathering exercise by the ABW about an extremist group whose aim was to terrorize people" of the Muslim faith in Poland, said a statement from the agency.

"These are the first two arrests of members of this group, which was preparing acts of violence in Poland," Zaryn said.

While he did not name the group involved in this new plot or go into details of what they were planning, he said they had been inspired by attacks carried out by right-wing extremists Anders Breivik and Brenton Tarrant.

Breivik used a truck bomb and then guns to kill 77 people, many of them young people, in Norway in July 2011.

Australian Tarrant killed or wounded dozens of Muslims in an attack on two mosques in New Zealand in March this year.

There are around 20,000 Muslims in Poland, a country of 38 million people, most of them Catholic.



Iran Tells France to Review ‘Unconstructive’ Approach Ahead of Meeting

Iranian flag flies in front of the UN office building, housing IAEA headquarters, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Vienna, Austria, May 24, 2021. (Reuters)
Iranian flag flies in front of the UN office building, housing IAEA headquarters, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Vienna, Austria, May 24, 2021. (Reuters)
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Iran Tells France to Review ‘Unconstructive’ Approach Ahead of Meeting

Iranian flag flies in front of the UN office building, housing IAEA headquarters, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Vienna, Austria, May 24, 2021. (Reuters)
Iranian flag flies in front of the UN office building, housing IAEA headquarters, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Vienna, Austria, May 24, 2021. (Reuters)

Iran's foreign ministry called upon Paris to review its "unconstructive" approach, a few days before Tehran is set to hold a new round of talks about its nuclear program with major European countries.

On Monday, Emmanuel Macron said Tehran's uranium enrichment drive is nearing a point of no return and warned that European partners in a moribund 2015 nuclear deal with Iran should consider reimposing sanctions if no progress is reached.

"Untrue claims by a government that has itself refused to fulfil its obligations under the nuclear deal and has played a major role in (Israel's) acquisition of nuclear weapons is deceitful and projective," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei wrote on X on Wednesday.

France, Germany and Britain were co-signatories to the 2015 deal in which Iran agreed to curb enrichment, seen by the West as a disguised effort to develop nuclear-weapons capability, in return for lifting international sanctions.

Iran says it is enriching uranium for peaceful purposes and has stepped up the program since US President-elect Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the 2015 deal during his first term of office and restored tough US sanctions on Tehran.

French, German and British diplomats are set to hold a follow-up meeting with Iranian counterparts on Jan. 13 after one in November held to discuss the possibility of serious negotiations in coming months to defuse tensions with Tehran, as Trump is due to return to the White House on Jan. 20.

Baghaei did not mention French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot's comment regarding three French citizens held in Iran.

Barrot said on Tuesday that future ties and any lifting of sanctions on Iran would depend on their release.