The Spanish police detained a retired 74-year-old man on Wednesday, on suspicion of sending six letters containing explosive material to the country’s prime minister, as well as to the US and Ukrainian embassies. The letters had been detected in late November and early December. ALSO READ: Several letter bombs now detected, including one sent to Pedro Sánchez.
The Spanish national was arrested in the northern city of Miranda de Ebro in the province of Burgos (Castilla y León) and was ‘very active’ on social media, police said. They added that authorities ‘do not rule out the participation or influence of other people’ in the case, and a search of the man’s home was still under way.
An employee at the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid was slightly injured while handling a letter bomb in November. A bomb squad also destroyed an explosive device that was dispatched by regular post to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in the same month.
Letters with similar characteristics were sent to Spain’s Defence Ministry, a European Union satellite centre located at the Torrejón de Ardoz air base outside Madrid and an arms factory in northeastern Spain that makes grenades sent to Ukraine.
An envelope intercepted at the American Embassy’s security screening point in December was detonated by authorities after a wide area was cordoned off by Spanish police around the embassy in the centre of Madrid.
🚩Detenido en #MirandaDeEbro (#Burgos) el presunto responsable del envío de 6 cartas explosivas
— Policía Nacional (@policia) January 25, 2023
El arrestado, muy activo en #rrss, tenía conocimientos técnicos e informáticos
En estos momentos @policia continúa con el registro donde podría haber confeccionado los artefactos pic.twitter.com/fHrNbS84H2
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