Greek police search connection between parcel bombs to IMF and Schaeuble

Greece’s counter-terrorism service on Thursday said it was investigating whether a parcel bomb sent to German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble from Attica might be linked to a booby-trapped letter that exploded in the IMF mailroom in Paris on Thursday, in which an employee was injured.

No evidence to support such a link has been found so far, Greek authorities said, but they are working closely with Hellenic Post (ELTA) to determine whether other parcel bombs might have been sent via the Greek postal system.

French authorities earlier sent the Greek police copies of the photographs from the site of the explosion in Paris, following a request sent via the French police liaison in Athens. The photographs show the room where the booby-trapped parcel exploded after the attack but there is no trace of the envelope – which disintegrated in the explosion – nor any indication of where it came from.

The incident in Paris came just one day after German authorities intercepted and neutralised a parcel-bomb sent from Athens and on the same day that the terror group “Conspiracy of Cells of Fire (CCF)” claimed responsibility for the attack on Schaeuble through a post on Indymedia.

Concern in Greece and Europe is heightened by references in the CCF proclamation to the creation of an “international conspiratorial network of FAI and CCF cells in dozens of countries” and a pledge “to strike at the structures and individuals of the system of power with even greater passion and persistence.”

Investigating officers have not ruled out the possibility of a link based on their experience in 2010, when the same terror group attempted to send letter bombs to a number of politicians in Europe, including one intercepted at the office of German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin and one addressed to then Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi that was intercepted at Rome airport. More booby-trapped letters had been sent by the group at that time but were intercepted before they left Greece – including one addressed to then prime minister Nicolas Sarkozy.

Police officers also noted the similarities between the parcel-bomb sent to Schaeuble and that sent to the IMF, which both contained relatively small amounts of explosives, so that injury to the IMF employee from the blast was not life-threatening.

German authorities informed the Greek police that the parcel bomb in Berlin contained 31 grammes of gunpowder used for fireworks and a detonating mechanism. Experts said that the type and quantity of explosives used was insufficient to do serious damage and that the goal of the perpetrators was to make a symbolic gesture and cause an upheaval.

An investigation is also underway to trace the path of the parcel-bomb sent to Berlin, in which the police hope that the ultra-modern screening equipment that Hellenic Post recently had installed at the Athens airport will be able to provide assistance. Among others, the equipment keeps records of all mail that is screened and these will now be scanned to see if the parcel addressed to the German finance minister is listed. Greek authorities are also investigating which external post box in Athens the parcel was sent from, in order to check whether the sender was recorded by CCTV.

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