France seeks help from Greek authorities in terror probe
French judicial authorities have appealed to their Greek counterparts for information relating to migrants who have traveled to western Europe via Greece over the past year in a bid to trace suspected members of the Islamic State group, Kathimerini understands.
A well-informed source told Kathimerini that French authorities submitted the request via Eurojust, the European Union’s judicial cooperation unit, with the aim of comparing data they have from individuals who participated in last November’s terrorist attacks in Paris with data held by Greek authorities.
Specifically, French authorities want access to the Greek Police’s electronic database and Eurodac, Europe’s shared fingerprint database, to determine whether the hundreds of thousands of names of migrants and refugees include those of any people with suspected links to ISIS, particularly with members of the cell that carried out the attacks in Paris last November.
According to sources, French officials are particularly interested in migrants who entered Europe via Greece in the period between last summer and last November when the attacks were carried out.
French authorities have not submitted a similar request to Belgian authorities, Kathimerini understands, despite the fact that the perpetrators behind another set of terrorist attacks on the airport and metro in Brussels last March appear to belong to the same cell of ISIS jihadists who carried out the Paris attacks.
Some of the Paris attackers were found to have passed through Greece’s Leros and Patra.
