Polish officials said on Tuesday they had arrested a radical nationalist who planned to detonate a vehicle loaded with four metric tonnes of explosives outside parliament, possibly when the president and prime minister were in the building.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said there was a link between the man arrested on suspicion of plotting to blow up Poland’s parliament and Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in gun and bomb attacks in Norway last year.
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Inspiration? The scientistu00a0who was arrested for planning to bomb the Polish parliament was using the same methods that Anders Breivik used last year.u00a0File Pic
Tusk told a news conference the Polish bomb plot suspect “did not hide his fascination” with Breivik. He also said an analysis of Breivik’s contacts abroad had helped lead Polish investigators to the suspect.
Prosecutors said the man, a scientist who works for a university in the southern city of Krakow, had assembled a small arsenal of explosive material, guns and remote-controlled detonators and was trying to recruit others to help him.
A video recording taken from the suspect showed what prosecutors said was a test explosion he conducted, sending up a huge cloud of dust and leaving a large crater in the ground.
“The suspect does not belong to a political group or party. He claims that he was acting on nationalistic, anti-Semitic and xenophobic motives,” prosecutor Mariusz Krason later told a news conference. “He carried out reconnaissance in the neighbourhood of the Sejm (parliament). This building was to be the target of the attack. He collected explosives and materials for detonation,” Krason said. u00a0
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