Mail bomb attacks target Spain and Ukrainian diplomats
Between November 24 and December 2, 2022, a total of six letter bombs were sent to high profile targets in Spain including Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, the Torrejon Air Base and the United States and Ukrainian Embassies in Madrid, among other sites connected to ardent Spanish support of Ukraine in Russia’s ongoing war. The defense minister, who recently announced that Spain would send six HAWK air defence systems to Ukraine, was also targeted in the attack, as was the headquarters of Instalaza in Zarazoga, a Spanish weapons manufacturer which supplies Ukraine with C90 rocket launchers.
Incidentally, the timing of the attack coincided with a visit carried out by Spain’s Defense Minister, Margarita Robles, to the Ukrainian port city of Odesa, where she met with her counterpart Oleskii Reznikov where she released a statement that the letter bombs would not deter Spain’s support for Ukraine.
Most of the letter bombs were detected and defused, though one devise ignited and slightly injured a Ukrainian Embassy employee. And while no suspect has been named in the attacks, it is believed that the letters appeared to have been sent from within Spain. All of the letter bombs were contained in similar brown envelopes which contained loose gunpowder and an electrical ignition mechanism.
Coinciding with this wave of letter bombs in Spain and the ignition of one of the letter bombs at the Ukrainian Embassy in Madrid, more than a dozen packages containing explosives or animal parts, like the eyes of cows and pigs, were sent to Ukrainian diplomats throughout the world. According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, embassies in Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Croatia, Italy, Austria and the consulates general in Naples and Krakow received suspicious packages. All packages were reportedly ‘soaked in a liquid of a characteristics color and had a corresponding smell.’
ASERO speculates that these attacks were not initiated by a state-sponsored agent. Instead, taking into account the ease with which this modus operandi may be carried out, we suspect that this is a lone perpetrator or otherwise unaffiliated group of disgruntled individuals.
What we are seeing here is the initial wave of letter bombs originating in Spain, almost immediately followed by a copy-cat of sorts, which spreads outward into Europe sending a series of false letter bombs and animal parts to a series of Ukrainian diplomatic targets.
This is not the first time letter bombs have been used as a means of inciting fear and reaching high profile targets. In fact, the first recorded use of what would be considered today a conventional mail bomb attack dates all the way back to the November 1712 Bandbox Plot whereby a hatbox was configured to fire a number of loaded and cocked pistols upon opening in an attempt to assassinate Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford and the British Lord Treasurer.
We are all much more familiar with more recent case studies involving mail bombs including the universally known case of Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unibomber, who sent multiple mail bombs between 1978 and 1994 which resulted in the death or injury of over a dozen victims; the October 2018 spate of pipe bombs mailed to known and high profile Democrats and Trump critics including Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton, CNN news offices, millionaire philanthropist George Soros and actor Roert De Niro, among other figures; and, a campaign launched by what is referred to as the New IRA which claimed responsibility in 2019 for four parcel bombs containing homemade explosive devices sent to London City and London Heathrow Airports, Waterloo Station and the University of Glasgow, among other incidents.
In addition to explosive devises, the mail has also been used as a conduit to carry out biological and chemical attacks against specific and high profile targets. In January 2021, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who played a pivotal role in establishing US policy vis-à-vis the Covid-19 pandemic, opened a letter which contained a white powder. While the powder turned out to be benign, Dr. Fauci had initially feared it was either anthrax or ricin. There are numerous anthrax hoaxes involving the use of white powder sent via mail to high-profile targets including Donald Trump’s campaign office and Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
The objectives of these attacks is ostensibly to incite fear and to draw attention to the instigator’s cause or plight.
However, it is important for us to remember that these attacks also have the potential to cause widespread panic, damage on a large scale and, most importantly, loss of life.
In September 1972, Ami Shechori, the Israeli Agricultural Attache to England was killed by the explosion of a letter bomb addressed to him. The letter bomb was one of a series of similar bombs sent from Amsterdam to Israeli embassies around the world and addressed to individual embassy staffers. This wave of letter bombs was carried out just two weeks after the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. The Palestinian terrorist organization Black September claimed responsibility for both.
In 2001, just one week after the 9/11 attacks, anthrax-lined letters appeared in the US mail over the course of several weeks. The letters, which had a Trenton, New Jersey postmark, were sent to publications and news stations including ABC News, the New York Post, NBC News and CBS news. High profile news media and political figures were also targeted including National Enquirer publisher Bob Stevens, who died three days later from inhalation of the anthrax spores, Democratic Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy.
In total, five people died and at least 17 more fell seriously ill as a result of exposure to the anthrax and what remains today the worst biological attack in US history. It also prompted widespread hysteria and disrupted daily life and governance in the United States. In the years since the anthrax attack, it is estimated that the United States has invested over $50 billion in protection measures against biological threats.
Often times, there will be a wave of attacks involving explosives or purportedly harmful substances sent through the mail followed by a momentary spike in fear, awareness and enhanced security measures before we all quickly forget that it happened. However, we must remember that because this modus operandi is effective in garnering attention, if only in the short term, is relatively easy to carry out and has the potential to cause significant damage, we are likely to continue to see it being used by different types of adversaries going forward.
As a result, we must equip ourselves with the necessary tools to deal with this type of threat. The most important thing we can do is to promote awareness of and to the threat. Doing so can result in the early detection of a mail bomb which could have the potential to cause large scale damage or even loss of life.
The second thing, which both complements and strengthens awareness, is proper training to detect potentially suspicious mail, particularly when tasked with sorting through large volumes of mail, as is the case with many of the targets in these attacks. Training should consist of a combination of tools which provide a layered approach to threat detection including a cognitive approach involving the identification of suspicious indicators and the use of technology such as x-ray and sniffer sensor and detection devices, among others.
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