The alleged author of a salvo of letter bombs addressed at the end of last year to the Ukrainian embassy in Spain or to the Spanish Prime Minister, in which kyiv sees the hand of Moscow, was arrested on Wednesday January 25 in the North of Spain.
“Members of the National Police arrested this morning a man, of Spanish nationality, in Miranda de Ebro (North), considered to be the alleged author of the sending of six letters containing explosive material sent at the end of November and the beginning of December”, said a spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior in a written message. These letters had been addressed to the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, to his Minister of Defense, to the Ukrainian Embassy in Spain, to the United States Embassy in Spain and to an arms company manufacturing launchers. grenades donated by Madrid to kyiv at the start of the Russian invasion or to an important Spanish military base.
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According to the spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior, “the operation (…) is in progress and searches are being carried out at the home of the arrested person”. A police source told AFP that the man was a “74-year-old retiree”.
Alleged acts of “terrorism”
During the opening of one of these letters, addressed to the Ukrainian ambassador in Spain, the security officer of the embassy had been slightly injured in the right hand on November 30. The other letters had been intercepted by the security services. Spanish justice had opened an investigation into alleged acts of “terrorism”while kyiv had ordered a reinforcement of security in all its representations after the explosion of the letter in its Madrid embassy, described as“attack” by the head of Spanish diplomacy, José Manuel Albares.
Ukraine’s ambassador to Spain, Serhii Pohoreltsev, had implicitly accused Russia of being behind the bombed mail sent to him. “We are well aware of the terrorist methods of the aggressor country”he said on Spanish public television. “The methods, the attacks of Russia oblige us to be ready for any type of incident, provocation, or attack”he added.
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The Russian embassy in Spain had for its part condemned the sending of these letter bombs. “Faced with the information on the explosive packages sent to the Ukrainian Embassy in Spain and to Spanish official entities, we declare that any terrorist threat or act, moreover directed against a diplomatic mission, is totally condemnable”she had written.
Behind this machination, the Russian Imperial Movement?
In an article published on Sunday and quoting American officials, the “New York Times” assures us that the American and European intelligence services suspect a Russian paramilitary group, the Russian Imperial Movement (MIR), of being behind this campaign of sending letter bombs. This ultranationalist and white supremacist group, registered on the American list of terrorist organizations in 2020, would have acted underhand for Russian military intelligence (GRU), affirms the American daily. “Significant members of the group traveled to Spain and the (Spanish) police shed light on its links with far-right Spanish organisations”writes the “New York Times”.
According to the daily, this campaign was organized to ” test “ the capacity of these groups to act in the event of an escalation of the conflict. “It looks like a warning shot”assured the daily Nathan Sales, former coordinator of the fight against terrorism of the American State Department.
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Questioned by AFP, the Spanish Ministry of the Interior declined to comment on this information. According to Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), which maintains a directory of major supremacist groups around the world, MIR was founded in 2002 and has been fighting since 2014 alongside pro-Russian separatists. in the Donbass region of Ukraine. He maintains “contacts with neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups across Europe and the United States” and “provided paramilitary training to Russian nationals and members of organizations from other like-minded countries”he explains.
