Athens: Greek authorities have charged two local men with terrorist acts in connection with a wave of mail bombs that targeted diplomatic missions in Athens.
Court officials say the suspects, whose names have not been released, were charged Tuesday with belonging to a terrorist group, acts of terrorism and causing explosions that endangered human lives. The men, both in their twenties, were arrested Monday.
The charges carry a minimum 25-year prison sentence.
The charge sheet did not specify what group the two men allegedly belonged to.
Meanwhile, a suspicious package was found at German Chancellor Angela Merkel's office in Berlin Tuesday the Federal Crime Office (BKA) said.
Merkel was in Belgium on an official visit Tuesday.
Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel reported in its online edition that the package had been received at the mail office of the chancellery.
The news came after parcel bombs exploded at the Russian and Swiss embassies in Athens Tuesday and devices sent to three others were intercepted, the latest in a wave of attacks linked to left-wing extremists.
A string of parcel bombs exploded at Greece’s Parliament and embassies in Athens, but there were no reports of injuries.
Test parcels intercepted in September
Bomb found in Dubai travelled on passenger flights
A small device exploded outside Switzerland’s embassy Tuesday and Greek police carried out a controlled explosion of a package sent to the Bulgarian embassy, a day after the discovery of a parcel-bombing campaign in Athens.
The explosion happened when a Swiss embassy employee threw a suspect parcel into the embassy yard, a police source said. Nobody was hurt.
And a bomb disposal unit detonated another suspect package that had been mailed to the Bulgarian embassy in another location in Athens.
On Monday, several booby-trapped packages addressed to other embassies and French President Nicolas Sarkozy were defused, and police arrested two men suspected of links to a far-left group.
Another suspect parcel was protectively detonated by police on Tuesday outside the Greek parliament.
In Sofia, Bulgaria's foreign ministry said the package had beeped for metal when run through a detector, while the officially inscribed sender denied sending it, raising suspicions that something was wrong.
"The actual sender of the package is yet unknown," the ministry said. On Monday one of the parcels intercepted was intended for Sarkozy. The package that detonated had been mailed to the Mexican embassy in Athens and ignited inside a courier company office.
Two other parcels were to have been sent to the Dutch and Belgian embassies.
Also Tuesday, a police patrol in the southern Athens suburb of Faliro came under fire but police said the incident could be crime-related.
Local elections are due to be held in Greece this weekend. The police have so far established no clear motive for the parcel bomb plot, or explained the choice of recipients.
