Czech Republic identified two suspects in 2014 Vrbetice munitions depot explosion

Police in the Czech Republic released images of two men on Saturday evening suspects of the attack in a Ammunition depot in Vrbetice in 2014, which claimed the lives of two people. These men would have They have several identities, including those of two individuals whom the British police consider to be possible perpetrators of the poisoning in the United Kingdom of a former Russian spy. Sergei Skripal..

“These people used at least two identities: the russian passports called ‘Alexander Petrov’ and ‘Ruslan Boshirov’, and later the Moldovan passport “Nicolai Popa” and the Tajik “Ruslan Tabarov” “, announced the Czech police in an official publication on his Twitter account, accompanied by images of the suspects.

These same images were first released in a statement by the London Metropolitan Police in 2018, when officers identified “Petrov” and “Boshirov” as the main suspects in the Salisbury nerve gas poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal. In addition, prosecutors accused them of attempting to assassinate a police officer affected by the same substance.

The Czech Republic has now linked the two men to the explosion in Vrbetice on October 16, 2014, alleging that “They were present on Czech territory in October 2014”. The incident has returned to extraordinary significance in the past few hours, after the Czech government announced the expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats “Clearly identified as agents of the Russian secret service GRU and SVR or Foreign Intelligence Service, in connection with this attack. Czech Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Jan Hamacek announced that they had to leave the country within 48 hours.

Hamacek himself has said he plans to discuss with his colleagues in the European Union the alleged Russian involvement in the explosions at the Vrbetice munitions depot in 2014. our allies in the Vrbetice affair. On Monday, I will also talk about it at the meeting of EU foreign ministers, ”Hamacek said on his Twitter account on Sunday.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis explained that this information had been passed on to Czech President Milos Zeman, who would fully agree with the decision taken.

“Based on clear evidence obtained through an investigation by our security forces, I must say that there is a reasonable suspicion of the involvement of agents from Russian Military Secret Service (GRU) unit 29155 in the ‘explosion of the munitions stores in Vrbetice in 2014, “Babis said, according to public news channel CT24.

Warehouse number 16 at the Vrbetice base exploded on October 16, 2014 and a second warehouse, number 12, suffered the same fate on December 3 of the same year. Two people died in the first detonation, which caused extensive damage and forced the evacuation of neighboring towns.

Babis himself recalled the two deaths caused by the first explosion in his speech this Saturday and highlighted the work of the police, in particular that of the National Center for the Fight against Organized Crime. “The Czech Republic is a sovereign state and must respond accordingly to these unprecedented events”Babis said.

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