Italy: Pakistanis linked to 2020 Charlie Hebdo attack arrested
Rome: Italy's anti-terrorism police and Europol have arrested 14 people while conducting an anti-terror raid on a Pakistani cell operating in Italy and other European countries, media reports said on Wednesday.
They were reportedly linked to the man who attacked France's Charlie Hebdo magazine in 2020.
The cell was allegedly linked to a wider network called the Gabar Group, itself linked to Zaheer Hassan Mahmoud, the 27-year-old Pakistani man who attacked the former offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris in September 2020, wounding two people with a cleaver, reports ANSA news agency.
The arrested people in Italy and other nations have been charged with conspiracy to commit international terrorism.
However, the total number of people arrested in the incident is still not known.
Mahmoud went to Charlie Hebdo's former offices to punish them for re-publishing cartoons of the prophet Mohamed for which 12 people were killed there in January 2015, reports ANSA.
He wounded two staffers of a press agency that had taken over the offices.
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