{"id":136016,"date":"2017-12-04T01:58:14","date_gmt":"2017-12-04T06:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=136016"},"modified":"2017-12-04T01:58:14","modified_gmt":"2017-12-04T06:58:14","slug":"germany-suspicious-package-part-of-extort-plot-aimed-at-dhl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/12\/04\/germany-suspicious-package-part-of-extort-plot-aimed-at-dhl\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany: Suspicious package part of extort plot aimed at DHL"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Karl-Heinz<\/a>
Karl-Heinz Schr\u00f6ter (Photo by Ralf Roletschek – Own work, GFDL 1.2<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

BERLIN \u2014 A suspicious package containing nails that led to a bomb scare at a Christmas market in Germany was part of a blackmailing plot against a delivery company, German authorities said Sunday.<\/p>\n

Brandenburg state Interior Minister Karl-Heinz Schroeter told reporters the package was part of a scheme to extort millions of euros (dollars) from delivery company DHL. It was delivered Friday to a pharmacy on the same street as the market in the city Potsdam and later destroyed in a controlled explosion.<\/p>\n

Schroeter said the market itself most likely wasn’t a target. The person who sent the parcel was still at large, he said. Officials declined to say if they had any clues about the sender’s identity.<\/p>\n

An online company in the town of Frankfurt an der Oder received a similar package at the beginning of last month.<\/p>\n

Police initially said the package contained \u201ca cylindrical object with cables, batteries and nails\u201d but lacked an ignition mechanism and wasn’t viable as a bomb. They now think it could have exploded, though didn’t elaborate why.<\/p>\n

Along with the device, the package held a letter that directed investigators to an online message outlining a blackmail plot and mentioning the parcel delivered to the Frankfurt an der Oder company, Schroeter said.<\/p>\n

Further attempts to extort money from other companies or private individuals are likely, he said. An unknown sender, spelling mistakes or wires hanging out of a package could all be indications of a letter bomb, he said, adding that police had activated a hotline to field concerns.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you get a suspicious package, do not open it. That could lead to an explosion,\u201d Schroeter said.<\/p>\n

The package triggered the evacuation of a popular Christmas market in downtown Potsdam on Friday afternoon. The market was re-opened Saturday with an increased police presence.<\/p>\n

Germans are still tense almost a year after a terror attack on a Christmas market in Berlin killed 12 people. Markets across the country have heightened security this year, while the government has warned that Germany remains a target for extremists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BERLIN \u2014 A suspicious package containing nails that led to a bomb scare at a Christmas market in Germany was …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":136032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[36880,3303],"class_list":["post-136016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-brandenburg-state-interior-minister-karl-heinz-schroeter","tag-germany","mauthors-kirsten-grieshaber","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}