Greece Halts Foreign Mail Service on Athens Blasts, Merkel
Greece Halts Foreign Mail Delivery After Bomb Explosions
Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images
Greece suspended mail deliveries to foreign destinations after parcel bombs exploded at the Swiss and Russian embassies in Athens and German Chancellor Angela Merkel was sent a package mailed from the country.
Greece suspended mail deliveries to foreign destinations after parcel bombs exploded at the Swiss and Russian embassies in Athens and German Chancellor Angela Merkel was sent a package mailed from the country. Photographer: Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images
Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Greece suspended mail deliveries to foreign destinations after parcel bombs exploded at the Swiss and Russian embassies in Athens and German Chancellor Angela Merkel was sent a package mailed from the country. Overseas mail will be halted for 48 hours, Greek’s Civil Aviation Authority said in a statement. Bloomberg's Nicole Itano reports. (Source: Bloomberg)
Greece suspended mail deliveries to foreign destinations after parcel bombs exploded at the Swiss and Russian embassies in Athens and German Chancellor Angela Merkel was sent a package mailed from the country.
Overseas mail will be halted for 48 hours, Greek’s Civil Aviation Authority said in a statement late yesterday. The move came after police defused two makeshift explosive devices at Athens International Airport and at least three other packages around the city. No injuries or damage were reported.
The package for Merkel was sent from Greece three days ago and discovered during a routine mail check at the Berlin Chancellery yesterday, while she was in Belgium, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said. “This was a functional explosive device,” he said. “If it was the same type of device as the package bombs in Athens, it could have caused not inconsiderable damage.”
Greek police battled to defuse a barrage of letter bombs in the capital of Athens yesterday, a day after one exploded at a courier company, injuring an employee, and another three were detected around the city. Two men, aged 22 and 24, were arrested after being caught with two bombs addressed to the Belgian embassy in Greece and to French President Nicolas Sarkozy. There is no relationship to international terror groups, government spokesman George Petalotis said.
Embassy Blast
A small-scale explosion at the Swiss embassy in the central Athens neighborhood of Kolonaki occurred after employees detected a suspicious package, the police said in an e-mailed statement. The package caused a fire but no explosion or injuries, the Swiss Foreign Ministry said. Another small blast occurred at the Russian embassy, the police said.
Bomb squads detonated suspicious packages near Parliament in Athens intended for the Chilean embassy, another at the Bulgarian embassy and one at a courier service addressed to the German embassy. An alert was sounded in parliament after a suspicious parcel was sent to former Prime Minister Costas Simitis, according to the Athens News Agency.
Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou said his government was working systematically to track down those responsible for the attacks. “Democracy won’t be terrorised,” he said in statements carried live on state-run NET TV. “These irresponsible and foolish acts were designed and are designed to hurt the great attempts of the Greek people to get the country back on track, to get the economy back on track,” he said.
The package to Merkel was sent on Nov. 1 and gave the Greek Finance Ministry as the sender, according to a police statement today. A package addressed to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was destroyed by Italian authorities at Bologna airport, the police said.
Suspects
No claim of responsibility has been made for the attacks. The suspects, arrested carrying two pistols, ammunition, and wearing bullet-proof vests and wigs, were yesterday charged with crimes including intent to commit terrorism, according to the Athens News Agency.
The 22-year-old suspect is wanted for participation in the Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire urban guerrilla group, the police said on Nov. 1. The police yesterday released photos of another five men, aged between 21 and 30, wanted for involvement in the Conspiracy group.
Ballistics tests on the guns showed they weren’t used in terror attacks claimed by the Revolutionary Sect group, which killed a journalist in Athens earlier this year and a police officer last year.
This week’s parcel bombs follow a June 24 attack in which a security guard was killed when opening a parcel bomb at the country’s police ministry in Athens. The device was intended for the Minister of Citizen Protection.
‘Terrorist Threat’
The European Union called a special meeting of experts on air safety for Nov. 5, following the explosions in Greece and the discovery last week of bombs in air-cargo shipments originating in Yemen that were bound for synagogues in Chicago.
“The European Commission is keeping a close eye on the latest developments from the point of view of internal affairs and transport,” Michele Cercone, a spokesman for the commission, the EU executive, told reporters in Brussels today. “The terrorist threat is constant; we’ve seen that over the last few months in particular.”
Germany’s de Maiziere said “there’s no evidence of any connection” between the bomb sent to Merkel and the bombs that originated in Yemen. The Interior Ministry ordered German government offices and postal services to step up vigilance for suspicious parcels and issued similar recommendations to Deutsche Post AG, he said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Maria Petrakis at mpetrakis@bloomberg.net; Tony Czuczka in Berlin at aczuczka@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Angela Cullen at acullen8@bloomberg.net; James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net
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