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.



Mexico President Chides Trump: Mexican America ‘Sounds Nice’

Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum shows a 1661 world map showing the Americas and the Gulf of Mexico in response to US President-elect Donald Trump's comments about renaming the body of water, during a press conference at National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico, in this photo distributed on January 8, 2025. (Presidencia de Mexico/Handout via Reuters)
Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum shows a 1661 world map showing the Americas and the Gulf of Mexico in response to US President-elect Donald Trump's comments about renaming the body of water, during a press conference at National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico, in this photo distributed on January 8, 2025. (Presidencia de Mexico/Handout via Reuters)
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Mexico President Chides Trump: Mexican America ‘Sounds Nice’

Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum shows a 1661 world map showing the Americas and the Gulf of Mexico in response to US President-elect Donald Trump's comments about renaming the body of water, during a press conference at National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico, in this photo distributed on January 8, 2025. (Presidencia de Mexico/Handout via Reuters)
Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum shows a 1661 world map showing the Americas and the Gulf of Mexico in response to US President-elect Donald Trump's comments about renaming the body of water, during a press conference at National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico, in this photo distributed on January 8, 2025. (Presidencia de Mexico/Handout via Reuters)

Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum on Wednesday suggested North America including the United States could be renamed "Mexican America" - an historic name used on an early map of the region - in response to US President-elect Donald Trump's pledge to rename the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America."

"Mexican America, that sounds nice," Sheinbaum joked, pointing at the map from 1607 showing an early portrayal of North America.

The president, who has jousted with Trump in recent weeks, used her daily press conference to give a history lesson, flanked by old maps and former culture minister Jose Alfonso Suarez del Real.

"The fact is that Mexican America is recognized since the 17th century... as the name for the whole northern part of the (American) continent," Suarez del Real said, demonstrating the area on the map.

On the Gulf of Mexico, Suarez del Real said the name was internationally recognized and used as a maritime navigational reference going back hundreds of years.

Trump floated the renaming of the body of water which stretches from Florida to Mexico's Cancun in a Tuesday press conference in which he presented a broad expansionist agenda including the possibility of taking control of the Panama Canal and Greenland.

Sheinbaum also said it was not true that Mexico was "run by the cartels" as Trump said. "In Mexico, the people are in charge," she said, adding "we are addressing the security problem."

Despite the back and forth, Sheinbaum reiterated that she expected the two countries to have a positive relationship.

"I think there will be a good relationship," she said. "President Trump has his way of communicating."