The suspect is accused of having sent a salvo of letter bombs to the Ukrainian embassy and the Spanish Prime Minister in 2022. He was granted parole, Spanish justice announced on Friday.
The 74-year-old man, suspected of having sent letter bombs to the Ukrainian embassy and to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, was placed in pre-trial detention at the end of January, due to a “risk of absconding” in “Russian territory”. The High Court of the National Audience now considers that this risk no longer exists, said this Spanish court responsible for terrorism cases in a press release.
His parole is accompanied by a withdrawal of passport, a ban on leaving the territory and the obligation to appear each week in a body near his home in Miranda de Ebro, in the north of Spain.
The court granted this conditional and supervised release because it considers that there is no risk of destruction of evidence, that his criminal record is clean, that there is no indication of recidivism and that, given his age, 74, “other measures less strict than pre-trial detention may be adopted,” the statement added.
Accused of “terrorism”
Accused of “terrorism” by the courts, this man is suspected of having sent six letters containing explosives at the end of 2022 to Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, to his Minister of Defense, to the embassies of Ukraine and the United States, to a arms company that manufactures grenade launchers donated by Madrid to Kiev, and to a Spanish military base.
During the opening of one of these letters, the security officer of the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid was slightly injured by the explosion. The Ukrainian ambassador to Spain, Serhii Pohoreltsev, implicitly accused Russia of being behind this bombed letter addressed to him.
The acts attributed to this man, who faces up to twenty years in prison, show that his intention was to “seriously harm public peace” and to compel the Spanish authorities “to cease” their “support shown in favor of the Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression,” said a judge at the National Audience after being remanded in custody at the end of January.
