Last week, a 35-year-old resident of Barcelona went to prison accused of hand-crafting and placing seven explosive devices in Sabadell and Santander bank branches in the Eixample and Sant Martí districts. They all detonated, causing damage valued at more than 80,000 euros and causing no injuries. The investigation, particularly complex, by the general investigation commission and the Tedax of the Mossos d’Esquadra faced the great difficulty of identifying individuals who did not claim or sign the actions.
However, not identifying oneself is also part of the modus operandi advised by the basic manuals of anarchism, an ideology to which the Mossos link them. It was not at all easy to name the three suspects.
The main one, of the three, the only one who went to prison, lived in a room in a shared flat in the Eixample. A not very large room where he had a laboratory with a large amount of products with which he made increasingly harmful artifacts. Hence the great success of the operation to remove from circulation some individuals who had written in capital letters on one of the explosives: “At the moment we do not aim to kill”.
The leader of the group had knowledge in physics and chemistry and recently survived by selling narcotics. The rest of the time he invested in the manufacture of explosives, in their refinement and in the improvement of the materials he used.
The suspects are accused of the crimes of vandalism, damage and possession of weapons and explosives and against public health. They are not accused of terrorism or criminal organization.
The Tedax researchers managed to recover intact an artifact from the same group that failed to explode and that they placed in the morning at the door of a Mercadona. And to rebuild the rest with the remains collected in the different explosions. These remains and the images from the security cameras, with more than 1,000 hours of recording, were the starting point for what was dubbed the Phiros case.
The actions were always done in the morning and two people participated, the one who placed and lit the wick of the artifact and the one who monitored the action.
