Increased EU security fails to spot letter bomb

Increased security at the European Parliament in Brussels today failed to stop at least one letter bomb from being delivered.

The package, addressed to a senior German MEP, burst into flames as it was being opened but the latest in a string of mail attacks on EU targets again failed to cause injury.

A second suspicious package, identical in form and also postmarked December 22 in Bologna, Italy, was addressed to another member of the parliament’s conservative group and was being investigated by bomb disposal experts.

The attack against German MEP Hans-Gert Poettering was the fifth on EU targets in the past two weeks and came despite increased security measures at EU institutions.

Poettering is the head of the conservative European People’s Party, the largest faction in the European Parliament.

A padded envelope caught fire when a member of Poettering’s staff opened it today.

“Luckily she was not injured,” said party spokeswoman Fiona Kearns. Poettering was on his way to Brussels from Germany when the attack happened.

The second suspect package was sent to Jose Ignacio Salafranca, head of the Spanish conservatives in the parliament.

“It was identical in every respect – the same size, posted on the same day and from the same place,” said David Harley, a spokesman for European Parliament President Pat Cox.

Party officials said the letter sent to Poettering appeared to contain a book like the incendiary package sent to the Italian home of European Commission President Romano Prodi on December 27 at the start of the bombing wave.

Parliament spokesman Andre Riche said a third suspicious package at parliament headquarters appeared to be a false alarm.

Investigators have zeroed in on an Italian anarchist group as the likely source of bombing wave. A group calling itself the Informal Anarchic Federation first took credit for setting two time bombs that exploded outside Prodi’s house on December 21, causing a small fire.

Besides Prodi, similar letters have also been sent to the head of the European Central Bank Jean-Claude Trichet, in Frankfurt, Germany, and the offices of Europol and Eurojust in the Hague, the Netherlands. None of the bombs have caused injury.

Three fire trucks and bomb disposal squads were parked outside the parliament building in central Brussels and plainclothes policemen were seen moving inside carrying metal boxes.

In a letter to left-wing Italian daily newspaper La Republica on December 23, the Italian anarchist group said it had planted the bombs to “hit at the apparatus of control that is repressive and leading the democratic show that is the new European order.”

The EU said it had stepped up security since the attacks.