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Explosives are intercepted at EU agencies
Packages containing explosive materials were intercepted separately at European Union agencies in Frankfurt and The Hague on Monday, two days after a booby-trapped parcel burst into flames in the home of Romano Prodi, the president of the European Commission. Workers in the mailroom of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt handed over to the local police a package postmarked Bologna, Italy, and addressed to the bankâs president, Jean-Claude Trichet, according to news agencies. Trichet reportedly was in the office but never handled the parcel. In The Hague, employees at Europol, the European Unionâs law enforcement coordination agency, evacuated their offices at 4 p.m. while Dutch police officers defused an explosive device sent to the director of the agency, JÃŒrgen Storbeck.
| "Someone is killing the great bureaucrats of Europe" |
ââIt was a real letter bomb,ââ said Astrid Rijsdorp, a member of the Dutch prosecutorâs office investigating the incident. ââIt was the size of a package with a book in it,ââ she said by telephone from the Netherlands. Rijsdorp and other officials said it was too early to draw any links between the parcels in Bologna, The Hague and Frankfurt. The package opened by Prodi on Saturday contained a novel, ââThe Pleasureââ by the late Italian fascist sympathizer, Gabriele DâAnnunzio.
| D'Annunzio was a bit more complicated than simply being a "fascist sympathizer." He was a poet and a playwright and a war hero, and at various times he was all over the political spectrum. On a personal note, he was my grandaddy's commander in 1919, when he occupied Fiume. That was when he declared war on Italy. |
Earlier this month, two small bombs exploded outside Prodiâs home in Bologna. A group calling itself the Informal Anarchist Federation took responsibility for the attack, saying its targets were Prodi and the European Union. In a letter to the Italian daily La Repubblica, the group said it had ââhit at the apparatus of control that is repressive and leading the democratic show that is the new European order.ââ
| Sounds like the Sacco and Vanzetti Martyrs' Brigades... |
The attack outside Prodiâs house was carried out ââso the pig knows that the maneuvers have only begun to get close to him and others like him,ââ the letter said.
| Yeah. Yeah. We're all impressed... |
A spokesman for the European Commission in Brussels, Stefaan de Rynck, said security officials at the EU headquarters held meetings on Monday to discuss ââappropriate measuresââ in light of the attacks on Prodi. De Rynck said by telephone that it was ââup to relevant authoritiesââ to establish whether a link existed between the explosive package sent to Prodi and the ones sent to the central bank and the police agency. Yet it was unclear Monday how much coordination was occurring between police agencies across Europe. Europol is charged with fighting terrorism, drug trafficking and other pan-European criminal activities in Europe, but a spokeswoman contacted late Monday said the agency was not investigating the incidents.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2003-12-30 |
