French police are investigating a suspicious letter addressed to the interior minister that tested positive for the plague.
Discovered at a mail-sorting centre near Dijon, the letter was addressed to the town hall of Roubaix, in the north of France outside Lille, for the attention of Gérald Darmanin, the minister of the interior.
Police were called when the unstamped envelope, with undisclosed “inscriptions” on its back, roused suspicions among workers. Inside, they discovered a black powder and a letter containing racist insults.
Ineffective – usually got to get it into the bloodstream – but innovative all the same.
Probably some pettifogging EU rule about sending rats through the post.
Certainly a primitive waste of time. The modern method of introducing the plague is to import millions of people from countries where it thrives.
Pneumonic plague is the really shit version of that disease, so might be able to be inhaled from a powder. Looks like a lone nutter but besides the torching of the signal boxes, there has now been widespread cutting of optical fibre cables. That looks more organised than JSO could manage.
Surely the time to protest was before the taxpayer’s cash was pissed away on this nonsense.
So I’d suppose you’re right, TG. It’s probably a lone nutter.
The widespread pre-Olympic sabotage of French railways last week was quickly identified by the telegraph as having been carried out by Russia. Since then they’ve gone a bit quiet on the story.
I never knew “the plague” was available in powdered form. You live and learn, but possibly not by reading that particular woeful apology of a paper.
Why do they need the Russians to stop trains running? Don’t they have unions over there?
@Simon Neale
The French (and Paris in particular) are currently testing that theory to destruction.
The posting of letters laden with anthrax spores in the US in 2001 was never really solved satisfactorily. The FBI investigation was, to use a technical term, crap.
Did the FBI itself post the letters? The CIA? Some mad terrorist group or individual loonie?
I assume there must be enthusiasts somewhere who have a theory to propound but I’ve not come across them.
Continued: WKPD observes –
The FBI and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) both gave permission for Iowa State University to destroy the Iowa anthrax archive and the archive was destroyed on October 10 and 11, 2001.
The FBI and CDC investigation was hampered by the destruction of a large collection of anthrax spores collected over more than seven decades and kept in more than 100 vials at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. Many scientists claim that the quick destruction of the anthrax spores collection in Iowa eliminated crucial evidence useful for the investigation. A precise match between the strain of anthrax used in the attacks and a strain in the collection would have offered hints as to when bacteria had been isolated and, perhaps, as to how widely it had been distributed to researchers. Such genetic clues could have given investigators the evidence necessary to identify the perpetrators.
To be clear, the anthrax attacks began on September the 18th, 2001. The anthrax archive was destroyed on October the 10th and 11th, 2001.
How could anyone look at those dates and not think “conspiracy”?
The modern method of introducing the plague is to import millions of people from countries where it thrives.
Such as California, Simon.
It’s difficult to read this and not think of Inspector Clouseau:
Last week, Kirill Gryaznov, a 40-year-old Russian national and suspected spy for the Kremlin, was arrested in Paris on charges of sharing “intelligence with a foreign power with a view to provoking hostilities in France”.
Mr Gryaznov was arrested after French police intercepted a phone call in which he allegedly said: “The French are going to have an opening ceremony like there has never been before.”
Tested positive before or after he had touched it?