LONDON – At least six people have been injured by seven letter bombs in Britain over the past three weeks, in what police said could be a campaign by animal rights extremists or disgruntled motorists fed up with this country's automobile laws – or both.
None of the injuries has been serious and the devices, contained in padded mailing envelopes, were designed to “cause shock and relatively minor injuries” using “pyrotechnic” material rather than “conventional explosives,” said Anton Setchell of the Association of Chief Police Officers.
Setchell called animal rights extremists and disgruntled motorists “priority lines of investigation.”
Animal rights radicals have waged previous violent campaigns in Britain, including scores of firebombings.
On Jan. 18, three commercial laboratories that do forensic work with police received letter bombs in the mail. One exploded, injuring one person. The other two were intercepted and did not explode, Setchell said.
The name of Barry Horne, an animal rights extremist and convicted firebomber who died on a hunger strike in prison in 2001, was written on one of the packages.
Letter bombs exploded this week at three companies linked to the regulation of roads and drivers.
On Monday, a woman was injured at the office of Capita Group in London, which has many government contracts, including design and management of the control system for traffic congestion, which charges drivers the equivalent of about $16 a day to enter central London. Although the program has been widely praised for reducing traffic, it is unpopular among many drivers.
On Tuesday, two men suffered cuts and burns at the accounting firm Vantis in Wokingham, 40 miles southwest of London. The package that exploded was addressed to one of the firm's clients, Speed Check Services, which provides highway speed-enforcement equipment and technology to police.
A group called Motorists Against Detection has claimed to have caused $40 million worth of damage by destroying 1,000 speed cameras since 2000, but says it is not behind the letter bombs.
A woman was injured yesterday in a blast at the government's Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency main office in Swansea, Wales.
On Saturday, a 53-year-old man was slightly injured when he opened a letter bomb mailed to his home in Folkestone, in Kent, southeast of London.
Kent police were investigating whether it was linked to the other incidents.
