Arrests in Greece over letter bomb: police

Two men were arrested in Thessaloniki, northern Greece, late on Thursday in connection with a botched letter bombing earlier this month, AFP reports citing police. The two men, believed to be in their 30s, were picked up by anti-terrorist police after a tract appeared online claiming the attempted attack in the name of an Italy-based radical anarchist group. The letter bomb, addressed to a retired senior police officer purportedly from his brother, had ignited in a post sorting centre near Athens on July 3 without causing any injuries. Similar devices had been sent by the Italian Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI) to then justice minister and the warden of Greece's top security Korydallos prison in 2011. FAI has expressed solidarity with jailed members of the Greek militant outfit Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei, which had sent parcel bombs to European leaders and embassies and carried out arson and bomb attacks some three years ago. In the tract posted on the anti-establishment Indymedia Athens website, the Informal Anarchist Federation said it had targeted the retired officer as he had overseen operations against Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei. The outfit threatened further attacks against anti-terrorist police, noting that they occupy a "prominent position" on their list of targets. "We dedicate our attack to the remorseless and proud members of Conspiracy," the tract said. "Old groups are being reactivated and new ones formed to fire up the nightmares of authority and of its servants," it said. Earlier on Thursday, a court conditionally released a 29-year-old anarchist who had been placed in pre-trial detention in December 2010 as a suspected Conspiracy member. The anarchist, Costas Sakkas, had gone on hunger strike since June to protest his innocence.