Czech Counterintelligence Probing Leaks About Allegedly Prepared Ricin Attack - Reports

PRAGUE (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th May, 2020) The Czech Security Information Service (BIS) has asked the Prosecutor General's Office to start an investigation into media leaks of classified information about the alleged arrival of an employee of Russian security service with the ricin poison, Czech media reported.

In late April, Czech weekly news magazine Respekt claimed, citing alleged sources in the country's special services, that a man with a Russian diplomatic passport arrived in Prague three weeks ago carrying a deadly poison known as ricin. The weekly speculated about an attempted assassination of local politicians in Prague - Ondrej Kolar and Zdenek Hrib - who are connected to the removal of the monument to Soviet Marshall Ivan Konev as well as renaming a square in front of the Russian embassy in honor of assassinated Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov. The accusations have been refuted by Moscow.

"We have filed a lawsuit about crime as the classified information has leaked within the past days, which has negatively affected our work. The investigation has already showed that the illegal disclosure of the classified information took place outside the BIS," a spokesperson for the BIS, Ladislav Sticha, told the Lidove noviny newspaper on late Wednesday.

On Wednesday, the issue was also considered by the Security Committee of the Czech parliament, which expressed support for the BIS in its struggle with foreign intelligence services.

A number of Russian officials - including Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova - said that the Czech accusations were false and lacked any evidence. Czech President Milos Zeman has also expressed doubts that the reports about the allegedly prepared ricin attack were correct.