| Tomsk criminal frightened American diplomats with anthrax Representatives of the FSB yesterday announced the detention of a citizen who, back in early 2002, sent letters threatening terrorist attacks to US and Canadian embassies around the world. The attacker sprinkled some white powder into his messages. Considering that shortly before this, terrorists in the United States sent similar letters to government agencies with powder that actually contained anthrax spores, the “news” from Russia at one time caused a commotion in the diplomatic missions of both American states. As a consequence of this, the Russian special services were also put on their feet.
However, it has now turned out that the “Russian letters with powder” are absolutely harmless and were simply an idiotic trick of a 38-year-old previously convicted resident of Tomsk. According to the FSB, in this way he decided to take revenge on the Canadian authorities for refusing him permission to enter the country.
At the beginning of March 2002, the US Consul General in Yekaterinburg contacted the FSB Directorate for the Sverdlovsk Region and said that his country’s embassies in The Hague, Vienna and Berlin had received letters from a certain resident of Yekaterinburg. In them, the author threatened to infect American and Canadian diplomats working in Yekaterinburg with anthrax if they did not punish certain “Canadian scammers.” And a few weeks later in Moscow, representatives of the US and Canadian embassies contacted the FSB of the Russian Federation with the same messages. They reported that similar letters with powder from Russia arrived at their diplomatic missions in Austria, Belgium, Great Britain, Germany, Holland, Poland, Portugal, and the Czech Republic. Moreover, the sender indicated different people living in Tomsk, Novosibirsk and Krasnodar.
Counterintelligence officers asked for “letters from Russia” and, after studying them, determined that they were written by the same person, and the indicated senders were fictitious. As a result of painstaking work, FSB officers managed to identify the author of the messages and track him down. He was detained several weeks ago in St. Petersburg. As it turned out, the Tomsk resident had been traveling around the country lately, staying with his friends from prison, and living on fake documents. From the very beginning, a criminal case was opened on this story of “terrorism,” but it is not said what the Tomsk resident is now charged with. Alexander RASKIN |
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