The agents intervened 468 kilos of explosive precursors, chemical products and 2.2 kilos of finished explosive mixture
A person has been arrested in an operation carried out by the Civil Guard in Barcelona, in which a clandestine manufacturing workshop explosives in which he was apprehended from almost 500 kilos of material, one of the largest seizures of this type made in spain. The Civil Guard reports in a statement that the detainee, a 41 year old manlived in an isolated farmhouse in the municipality of Montmajor, in the Barcelona region of Bages, in which he enabled a clandestine laboratory.
In it, the agents 468 kilos of explosives precursors intervenedone of the largest seizures of this type of material carried out to date in Spain, as well as chemical products for the elaboration of the same, wick and 2.2 kilos of explosive mixture already finished.
The investigation of this case, called “Terms“, began a year ago when agents of the Information Headquarters of the Civil Guard they met through Intelligence Center once morest Terrorism and Organized Crime (CITCO) of a suspicious transaction of explosives precursors through a platform of internet trade. The work of the Civil Guard led to a 41-year-old man residing in Montmajor, from where he acquired large quantities of precursors, fuses, electrical equipment and numerous laboratory materials.
The Civil Guard explains that explosives precursors are chemical substances that, from certain concentrations and mixed with each other or with other products, are likely to be used for the homemade and illicit manufacture of explosives. These characteristics mean that its trade, acquisition, possession and use are rigorously controlled, “to prevent its diversion for illicit, violent or terrorist purposes”, he specifies.
In this sense, the Civil Guard qualifies that, precisely because of the dangerousness of finished explosive mixtures, of the precursors and other chemical products found, technical agents participated in the registration of the workshop in explosives deactivation (TEDAX).
In the workshop, the agents found, in addition to the explosive material, lab’s material such as flasks and test tubes of different capacities, electric heating mantle, magnetic stirrers, vacuum pumps, flow controllers, alembic for distillation and increase in the degree of concentration of chemical compounds, thermometers and precision scales, as well as a gas mask for protection from hazardous chemical vapors. The material found allowed the elaboration of gunpowder or triacetone triperoxide, also known as “the mother of Satan”, commonly used by Islamist terrorists, very dangerous and highly destructive.
These operations are one of the most important carried out by the Civil Guard in this area, among which those carried out in 2019 in Miranda de Ebro (Burgos) or in 2021 in Castilleja de la Cuesta (Seville) stand out, where clandestine workshops were dismantled to manufacture of explosive devices and handling of firearms.
