CAR Police Detain Several DHL Employees Under Probe Into Parcel Explosion In Russian House

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 20th December, 2022) Police in the Central African Republic (CAR) have arrested several DHL employees while investigating the parcel explosion in the Russian House in the car capital of Bangui, a senior source in the CAR police told Sputnik.

"So far we are at the stage of questioning those arrested. We have arrested and questioned two DHL employees, the deputy general director of DHL and the DHL operations manager who picked up the package from the airport. We were unable to question the general manager of DHL, who is a Cameroonian national. We learned that she flew to Douala (Cameroon's largest city) the same day the parcel arrived and has not returned yet," the source said.

Interrogators found out that DHL workers "had no device with them to determine whether the parcel contained an explosive device, they had no way of detecting it," according to the source.

"We intend to go formally to the Togolese police through Interpol. So I'm going to ask through Interpol in Bangui to cooperate with us to try to identify the person who sent the parcel from (Togo's capital) Lome," the source noted.

Interrogators will check whether the parcel was really sent from Togo and whether the logistics company could have forged the address of the parcel, the source added.

On December 16, the head of the Russian House in the CAR Dmitry Sytyi was hospitalized in Bangui after an assassination attempt. The police told Sputnik that the Russian diplomat received a parcel bomb and it exploded on a table in his cabinet, when he was going through his mail.

Photos from the blast site, obtained by Sputnik from the police, showed that there was a note at the crime scene with threats in French. According to the police, Sytyi received threats prior to the attack.