NewsEuropePortugal: Two dead in an attack on a Shiite Muslim center in Lisbon

Portugal: Two dead in an attack on a Shiite Muslim center in Lisbon

Published on : 03/28/2023 – 18:01

At least two people were killed in a stabbing attack on a Muslim center in Lisbon on Tuesday, Portuguese police said, who neutralized the assailant with a gun.

A knife-wielding man killed at least two people before being neutralized by Portuguese police in Lisbon during an attack on the world headquarters of the Ismailis, a Shia Muslim community led by the Aga Khan.

“The attack left several injured and, for the moment, two dead,” the police said in a statement, adding that the alleged perpetrator of the attack had been arrested after being shot and wounded by the security forces. order. The number of injured, however, was questionable, another source reporting only one injured.

The president of the National Council of the Ismaili Muslim Community, Rahim Firozali, thus affirmed in a press release that “a man armed with a sharp object” had entered the premises of the Ismaili center in Lisbon and had “attacked three people (…) fatally hitting two of them and wounding a third”. “The striker’s motives are not known,” he added.

The man who committed the attack with “a large knife” was admitted to a hospital in the Portuguese capital, authorities said. He is “alive and in custody”, police said.

“We know that he is an Afghan, a refugee, who, in fact, for one reason or another, broke into the center,” a community official told Portuguese private television SIC. Ismaili from Lisbon, Nazim Ahmad. “We know that there are two dead, two women (…) employees of the center,” he added.

Multiplication of attacks against Ismailis

The attack took place at the Ismaili Center in Lisbon. This community of Ismaili Shia Muslims established its world headquarters in Lisbon and its spiritual leader, the Aga Khan, obtained Portuguese nationality in 2019.

The Ismailis, a minority current of Shiite Islam, form a community of 12 to 15 million people spread over some thirty countries. They have around 7,000 members in Portugal.

In recent years, attacks have multiplied, particularly in Pakistan, against Ismailis, accused by Sunni extremists of embodying a “deviant” current in relation to Muslim orthodoxy.

“I express my solidarity and my condolences towards the victims and the Ismaili community”, reacted the Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa in front of the press, adding that it was “premature to make any interpretation on the motivations of this criminal act”. .

An “isolated act” according to the President of the Republic

“The first elements point to an isolated act,” said the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, in a press release.

According to the president of the Afghan Community Association in Portugal, Omed Taeri, the alleged assailant is a refugee who “suffers from psychological problems” after “losing his wife in Greece”.

He would have arrived in Portugal a little over a year ago and was worried about the fate of his three children, he said in an interview with the CNN Portugal news channel.

According to local media, the attacker is in his 40s and taking English lessons at the Ismaili center.

The victims, two women of Portuguese nationality according to the press, would be a teacher in her forties and a student in her twenties.

1983, last attack on Portuguese soil

The Aga Khan had decided to set up the headquarters of his community in Portugal after an agreement signed in June 2015 with the Portuguese State providing for tax advantages and diplomatic privileges, in particular in exchange for investments in the fields of scientific research. and development.

The last attack perpetrated on Portuguese soil dates back to July 27, 1983, when an armed group made up of five Armenians attacked the Turkish embassy in Lisbon, causing the death of two people. The assailants had perished in the attack.

The police said they were informed of the attack shortly before 11 a.m. local time (1000 GMT) and arrived very quickly on the scene. In the early afternoon, near the Ismaili center of Lisbon, hooded police officers armed with submachine guns were posted at the various entrances to this closed complex which notably houses a mosque in a northern district of Lisbon.

Camped in front of the main entrance, the journalists followed the movement of the police cars and the black vans of the special intervention unit.

With AFP

Source: France 24

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Latest Posts

Read More
More