Two women were murdered this Tuesday in Lisbon during a session at the Ismaelite Center. The fatalities were Portuguese nationals: Mariana Jadaugy, 24, and Farana Sadrudin, 49. They worked at the refugee aid center. One was the suspect’s English teacher, and the other a colleague.
According to the police, the perpetrator of the attack is Abdul Bashir, 29, an Afghan refugee, a widower, who lives in the outskirts of Lisbon with three minor children.
Bashir was admitted to a local hospital after threatening the policemen, who surrounded him, with “a large knife”, the weapon he used to kill the two women.
The man has resided in Portugal since 2021 and would have mental disorders, the newspaper indicates Express.
“I want to express to the Ismaili community, to the families of the victims, my solidarity and my sorrow,” reacted the Prime Minister, Antonio Costa.
The head of government highlighted the “prompt intervention of the Public Security Police, which allowed the arrest of the suspect, who is in the Hospital de Santa María, in Lisbon, receiving medical attention.”
“It is premature to make any interpretation about the motivations of this criminal act. We must safely wait for the authorities to carry out the necessary investigations, ”he added. The case was handed over to the anti-terrorism unit of the Judicial Police, state television channel RTP reported.
The police were alerted to the attack at the edge of 11 in the morning. When the agents arrived at the scene two minutes later, “they were confronted by a man armed with a large knife,” this security body said in a statement.
“The attacker was given orders to cease the attack, which he disobeyed, advancing towards the policemen with a knife in hand,” reports the PSP. Faced with the “serious and permanent threat, the police officers used firearms against the person and neutralized him.” It was later found out that they shot her legs.
There are “several injuries and two fatalities,” the authorities said. It is not clear if the injured were a result of the attack or police shooting.
The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, “presented the representative of the Ismaili Imamat in Lisbon, Nazim Ahmad, with his most sincere condolences for the criminal act that occurred this morning at the Lisbon Ismaili Center, asking him to also convey them to the prince Aga Kahn (Ismaili leader) and the families of the victims.”
In a spread note on the website of the Presidency, Rebelo de Sousa indicated that he is “permanently monitoring the situation in contact with the Government.”
The Head of State “underlines, on the one hand, that investigations are being carried out to clarify what happened and, on the other, that as the President of the Government has declared, the first indications point to an isolated event”.
According to the authorities, the man was not on any list of suspected terrorists, either in national or international databases.
