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Police in Cyprus have arrested a person on suspicion of terror-related offences and espionage, authorities said on Saturday. He appeared before a district court on Saturday, which ordered an eight-day detention pending inquiries. No further details would be issued, police said, citing national security.
Local media said the suspect, who may have links to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was arrested after credible information from a foreign intelligence service was received, warning that he may have been planning an attack.
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Armed Cypriot police patrol the public areas of the departure lounge of Cyprus' main Larnaca airport
(Photo: Petros Karadjias / AP)
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Israelis wait to board a ship to take them to Israel in Limasol
(Photo: Yiannis Kourtoglou / Reuters)
Several Cypriot news outlets reported that the suspect was a man of Azeri ethnic descent and had been arrested in the Zakaki suburb of the coastal city of Limassol. The suspect was thought to have had a British RAF military base in nearby Akrotiri under surveillance, as well as Cyprus's own Andreas Papandreou Air Base in the western region of Paphos since mid-April, Cyprus's ANT1 news portal reported.
Cyprus police beefed up their security deployment around Israeli tourists in recent days, out of concern that they may be targeted for attack. By some estimates, tens of thousands of Israelis who were stranded abroad when the attacks on Iran began and the Israeli airspace, closed flocked to the island and have been waiting for special rescue flights to take them home.
The new measures include special security around synagogues and hotels housing Israelis, mainly in Larnaca and Paphos and in the international airports. Cyprus also published the location of air raid shelters on the island.