The Ukrainian embassy in Lisbon received two suspicious envelopes this Monday afternoon after calling the on-site PSP with resources from the special police unit, a police source told Lusa.
The Ukrainian embassy in Lisbon confirmed to Lusa that it had called the public security police after identifying “suspicious correspondence”.
According to the same police source, the alarm was raised around 3 p.m. and at 5 p.m. teams from the Special Police Unit, namely from the Center for Deactivation of Explosives and Underground Security, were still on site to collect the suspicious envelopes.
Traffic on Avenida das Descobertas, where several embassies are located, has been closed and PSP resources are in place to ensure a security perimeter.
“Today we have received suspicious correspondence from other missions [ucranianas] already received last week”a source at the Ukrainian embassy told Lusa.
The same source did not know how to specify the contents of the packages brought by a postman, as they immediately aroused suspicion and were not opened, and the police were immediately alerted.
The “suspicious features” of the correspondence, which cannot be accepted under the embassy’s current security protocol, had to do with “its format and sender,” the embassy source said.
“People saw that right away [a correspondência] was suspicious, alerted the police and eventually the postman was arrested” on the grounds of the diplomatic mission, where police officers are still found “in large numbers”, the same source said.
On Friday, the office of Secretary General of the Internal Security System (SSI), Paulo Viseu Pinheiro, announced to Lusa that Portuguese authorities had strengthened the protection of the Ukrainian embassy in Lisbon and admitted to reassessing the threat level in Portugal. after booby-trapped letters were received by entities in Spain.
According to the SSI, the Anti-Terrorism Coordination Unit (UCAT), which operates as part of the internal security system, “monitoring the situation closely” and what’s in it “close cooperation with its Spanish, European and international partners”🇧🇷
“If, as a result of this cooperation with Spain and international partners, and our internal analysis, a reassessment of the level of threat and security is justified, the corresponding and appropriate alarm measures and security equipment will be immediately taken by the competent authorities”added the Office of the Secretary General of the SSI.
The UCAT brings together the Security Information Service (SIS) – which assesses the level of threat on the national territory -, the Judicial Police (PJ) – which is authorized to investigate terrorism -, the PSP – which provides diplomatic and “preventively strengthens the protection of the Ukrainian embassy in Lisbon” -, the GNR, the Aliens and Border Service (SEF), the Maritime Police and the Strategic and Defense Information Service (SIED).
The SSI also assured that all these entities “cooperate in an articulate and permanent manner” with international partners, in particular with the Spanish counterparts of the SIS and the PJ.
On November 30, a man was seriously injured at the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid by the explosion of an enveloped artifact. Since then, the existence of five more letters containing explosives has been revealed by Spanish authorities, the last of which lies in the US embassy on Spanish soil.
According to Rafael Pérez, the Spanish government’s secretary of state for security, the other envelopes containing explosives intercepted in the past week were sent to the prime minister, the defense minister, a satellite center and a weapons company.
The envelope sent to the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, was intercepted.
Source: DN
