An incendiary device hidden in a DHL package that caught fire in Germany in July was due to be sent by air to the UK as part of a suspected Russian sabotage plot that may also have been a dry run for a similar attack on the US and Canada.
The device, reported to have been secreted in shipments of massage pillows and erotic gadgets, started a fire on the ground in Leipzig that was feared to be capable of downing a plane – similar to a package that ignited at a DHL warehouse in Birmingham on 22 July.
Sources indicated the suspect package in Leipzig was also bound for the UK, though why the UK was chosen as the destination for the two devices, originally sent from Lithuania, is not fully clear.
An unconfirmed German report suggests they were addressed to fake recipients at real addresses in the UK, as were two other incendiary devices found in Poland, one of which Polish media said caught fire at a warehouse in Warsaw while the other was successfully intercepted.
Metropolitan police counter-terror officers declined to comment. The only official statement in the UK about the alleged plot was made last month, when counter-terror police confirmed a device had caught fire in Birmingham, nobody was hurt, and it was dealt with “by staff and the local fire brigade at the time”.
Four people were arrested in Poland as part of the alleged plot, it was announced last week, which the country’s chief prosecutor said was intended to commit sabotage using “camouflaged explosives and dangerous materials” in Europe. Two other individuals are also wanted by investigators in the country.
Another intention, according to the Polish authorities, was “to test the transfer channel” for similar parcels to be sent to the US and Canada, to see if similarly dangerous and destructive attacks could be reproduced elsewhere.
British police and officials, as well as their European counterparts in Germany, Poland and Lithuania, strongly suspect that Russia was behind the attacks as part of an effort to cause “mayhem” in the west in retaliation for western military support to Ukraine.
Last month, Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, warned that Russia’s GRU military intelligence appeared to be on “a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets: we’ve seen arson, sabotage and more”.
His German counterpart, Thomas Haldenwang, told the Bundestag that had the Leipzig package started burning during a flight “it would have resulted in a crash”. Although Haldenwang did not say Russia was behind the fire when he gave evidence, he accused the Kremlin’s spy agencies of “putting people’s lives at risk”.
On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the massage items in the suspect packages were booby trapped with a magnesium-based flammable substance. Magnesium fires are notoriously difficult to put out and are worsened if water is applied; special dry powder extinguishers should be used instead.
Russia has denied involvement in the alleged plot. “These are traditional unsubstantiated insinuations from the media,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the US newspaper.
