Letter bomb
A letter or parcel bomb is an improvised explosive device associated with the post to commit is sent to a targeted bombing.
Letter bombs are packed in normal envelopes or parcels and fitted with a detonator that detonates when the mail item is opened. That is why it is often not the target of the attack itself that becomes the victim, but people around them.
A special form were letters sent in 2001 with anthrax germs . You could also call them B letter bombs, a form of bacteriological bombs (see ABC weapons ).
Motivation for letter bomb attacks
The motivation for committing letter bomb attacks can have various causes. Often the acts are terrorist and politically motivated. But they are also used in private disputes or "turf wars" in the pimp milieu. There are less often letter bombs sent against companies after waves of layoffs.
Known letter bomb bombers
The first series of letter bombs was sent in Sweden by Martin Ekenberg in 1904 ; the target of the attack was entrepreneur Karl Fredrik Lundin in Stockholm. Between 1904 and 1909, the inventor and chemist sent a total of four parcel bombs.
In 1951 the 22-year-old Erich von Halacz sent three parcel bombs, as a result of which two people were killed and ten people were injured, some seriously. They were addressed to two factory owners and the editor-in-chief of a newspaper in Bremen, Verden and Eystrup, from whose relatives the perpetrator wanted to extort DM 5,000 each .
The later Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin arranged for 3 parcel bombs to be dispatched when Konrad Adenauer, Otto Küster and Franz Böhm were assassinated in 1952 . A police officer was killed in this attack.
Theodore Kaczynski , better known as Unabomber , sent sixteen letter bombs between 1978 and 1995.
In the 1990s, the Austrian Franz Fuchs sent letter bombs to various personalities in Austria and Germany. The then mayor of Vienna, Helmut Zilk , was seriously injured in the hand in an attack. Another broadcast went to the then mayor of Lübeck, Michael Bouteiller . On June 9, 1995, the television presenter Arabella Kiesbauer was attacked by a letter bomb, in which an assistant was injured. During his arrest, Franz Fuchs was injured by one of his own bombs. Franz Fuchs justified his acts with right-wing extremist motives ("Bavarian Liberation Army"). Following his trial, he committed suicide in his cell.
In December 2003 and January 2004 letter bombs were sent to representatives of the European Union . All shipments were posted in Bologna , Italy . In 2004, Johann Lang became known as the Hutthurm letter bomb bomber .
In November 2010, several parcel bombs were sent to the heads of government and ambassadors of European countries, among other things the German Federal Chancellery received a parcel bomb addressed to Chancellor Angela Merkel . The Greek Ministry of Economic Affairs was specified as the sender on the package. The bomb was defused by the police; five members of the anarchist group " Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire " are suspected .
In April 2013, shortly after the Boston Marathon attack , letters filled with the deadly herbicide ricin were sent to the President of the United States, Barack Obama , Republican Senator Richard Shelby , and his Democratic colleague Carl Levin . But none of the three letters reached their destination, which is why no victims were to be reported.
A short time later, a letter addressed to the German President, Joachim Gauck , which was allegedly filled with the highly explosive chemical hexamethylene triperoxide diamine , was intercepted and detonated some time later in the postal department of the Federal President's Office . On the evening of the same day it turned out that it was not the chemical mentioned above. It is assumed that the two incidents are not related to one another, but an emulation based on the American model cannot be ruled out.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mr. Ekenberg's fatal invention article in one day
- ↑ On behalf of the conscience, Begin was the mastermind behind the Adenauer attack, FAZ.net on June 12, 2006
- ^ Terror mail from a battered country Spiegel Online from November 3, 2010