Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

LETTER BOMBS • 385September Organization, which in September 1972 mailed out 64letter bombs to Israeli targets; the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski;and several other groups. Letter or parcel bombs have also been usedfor purely criminal purposes of malice, revenge, or simple murder.Letter bombers frequently either omit a return address or have anaddress unknown to the intended recipient, but more cunning mailbombers have either placed a secondary target’s address as the returnaddress or else have tried to send the packet with insufficient postageand the return address being that of the intended victim. Telltalesigns of letter bombs include one of more of the following in additionto a suspicious or unknown origin for the package: excessive postage,excessive taping of corners and edges of the package or letter,signs of staining of the package or letter by oil or grease, or unusualsmell. Since the Unabomber’s last few attempted bombings in 1995,the U.S. Postal Service has required all packages above a certainweight to be sent from post offices rather than from parcel drop-offbins, postal clerks are briefed on suspicious signs, and those mailingpackages may be required to present identification. While this maydeter mailing of letter bombs within the United States, this does notimmediately prevent letter or parcel bombs from being sent to theUnited States from abroad.In January 1997 eight letter bombs disguised as Christmas cardsarrived in the United States, posted from Alexandria, Egypt. Fourwere sent to the Washington, D.C., offices of Al Hayat, an Arabiclanguagenewspaper owned by Prince Khaled bin Sultan, a pro-Western member of the Saudi royal family, while two others wereaddressed to “The Parole Officer” at the federal prison in Leavenworth,Kansas, where Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman had been incarcerated.On 13 January 1997 four other letter bombs were sent tothe London offices of Al Hayat, one of which exploded, injuring twomail handlers. All these bombs contained Semtex, a powerful plasticexplosive that is extraordinarily difficult to detect.In Austria, in the period 1993–1997, five waves of a total of 25 letterbombs were mailed, killing four people and injuring 15, by FranzFuchs, an anti-immigrant bigot who targeted Gypsies, advocates forrefugees and immigrants, a bilingual school, and journalists and localofficials deemed friendly to immigrants. When Fuchs was arrestedon 1 October 1997, he attempted suicide by detonating one of hisbombs, which destroyed his hands without killing him. He was tried