Summary Several thousand people marched through central Athens against killing of Pakistan youth.
Several thousand people marched through central Athens on Saturday to protest a spate of anti-immigrant attacks in Greece, including the fatal stabbing of a 27-year-old Pakistani immigrant by suspected right-wing extremists.
Earlier in the day about 150 members of Greece s Pakistani community and a handful of Greeks gathered outside Athens City Hall to say funeral prayer and pay their respects to Shehzad Luqman, the Pakistani who died Thursday. His coffin was displayed on the ground while mourners unfurled a banner in Greek and English reading "Punishment to the fascist murderers of Shehzad Luqman." A hearse took the coffin away at the end of the ceremony.
"We want to be peaceful. We are simple workers, and we will not do what the fascists do. In the last three years they have attacked 700 to 800 people. ... We go to our jobs and they attack us. It s the job of the police to arrest these people and send them to jail," Javied Aslam, head of Greece s Pakistani community, said after the prayers.
Two Greek men in their 20s have been charged with Luqman s murder. They have admitted carrying out the killing but said their attack was the unfortunate result of an unintended escalation of a heated argument that started when Luqman s bicycle blocked the motorbike they were riding on.
But police sources said the suspects had taken off their motorbike s license plate and that a search of one of the suspect s houses found Golden Dawn pamphlets and that several knives turned up in both their homes. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly about the investigation.
