Poland thwarts plot to kill leaders with bomb attack
Source: Agencies |
November 21, 2012, Wednesday
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A Polish university researcher driven by nationalistic and anti-Semitic hatred was arrested for planning to detonate a four-ton bomb in front of the Parliament building in Warsaw with the president, prime minister, government ministers and lawmakers inside, authorities said yesterday.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the suspect and his plot were discovered as investigators looked into Polish links to the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik. Polish security officials have said Breivik bought small amounts of material for his bomb-making in Poland.
The foiled attack comes as the far-right movement appears to be growing in Poland, and as tensions simmer between Tusk's center-right government and its main rival, the conservative Law and Justice party led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
Kaczynski recently accused Tusk and other leaders of "murder" in the 2010 plane crash that killed his brother, the late President Lech Kaczynski, and 95 others. A state investigation found the tragedy was an accident caused by bad weather and human error, but Kaczynski has been calling it an assassination.
Tusk said the dramatic plan to assassinate Poland's leaders shows it is "high time to abandon a language of violence and hatred in public debate."
Prosecutors said yesterday they arrested the suspect in Krakow on November 9. They said he is a 45-year-old Polish researcher employed at the University of Agriculture in Krakow who had access to chemistry laboratories. He was in illegal possession of explosive materials, munitions and guns.
They said the suspect was motivated by nationalistic, xenophobic and anti-Semitic ideas, but does not formally belong to any political group. He has refused psychiatric testing, they added.
The man, who was not identified by name, was building bombs himself and also had detonators, said prosecutor Mariusz Krason. The suspect planned to launch his attack outside Parliament when the leaders and legislators were there, but hadn't set a specific date, said Krason.
"He believed that the current social and political situation in our country is moving in the wrong direction" and that those in positions of power are "foreign," Krason said. "In his opinion they are not true Poles."
Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the suspect and his plot were discovered as investigators looked into Polish links to the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik. Polish security officials have said Breivik bought small amounts of material for his bomb-making in Poland.
The foiled attack comes as the far-right movement appears to be growing in Poland, and as tensions simmer between Tusk's center-right government and its main rival, the conservative Law and Justice party led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
Kaczynski recently accused Tusk and other leaders of "murder" in the 2010 plane crash that killed his brother, the late President Lech Kaczynski, and 95 others. A state investigation found the tragedy was an accident caused by bad weather and human error, but Kaczynski has been calling it an assassination.
Tusk said the dramatic plan to assassinate Poland's leaders shows it is "high time to abandon a language of violence and hatred in public debate."
Prosecutors said yesterday they arrested the suspect in Krakow on November 9. They said he is a 45-year-old Polish researcher employed at the University of Agriculture in Krakow who had access to chemistry laboratories. He was in illegal possession of explosive materials, munitions and guns.
They said the suspect was motivated by nationalistic, xenophobic and anti-Semitic ideas, but does not formally belong to any political group. He has refused psychiatric testing, they added.
The man, who was not identified by name, was building bombs himself and also had detonators, said prosecutor Mariusz Krason. The suspect planned to launch his attack outside Parliament when the leaders and legislators were there, but hadn't set a specific date, said Krason.
"He believed that the current social and political situation in our country is moving in the wrong direction" and that those in positions of power are "foreign," Krason said. "In his opinion they are not true Poles."
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