Two people arrested for illegal manufacturing of explosives in Murcia

The Guardia Civil, within the framework of the “BALS” operation, arrested two people in the Region of Murcia for the crimes of illegal manufacturing of explosives and risk caused by explosives and other agents.

The investigation began in the middle of the year, when the Information Headquarters of the Guardia Civil received a communication from the Intelligence Centre against Terrorism and Organised Crime (CITCO) alerting that two people residing in different towns in the Region of Murcia had suspiciously acquired explosive precursor substances.

Explosives precursors are chemical substances that, at certain concentrations and mixed with each other or with other products, can be used for the homemade and illicit manufacture of explosives; Therefore, its trade, acquisition, possession and use are rigorously controlled.

Given the high risk of diversion for illicit uses of these explosive precursors, the Guardia Civil annually carries out information and awareness campaigns for both large companies and small establishments (economic operators) that trade in them so that they notify and warn of suspicious purchase attempts that they detect, as has been the case at hand.

The investigation carried out by specialists from the Information Headquarters made it possible to identify both buyers of these precursors, who lived in two different locations and who were not related to each other; discovering that in both cases, in addition to these precursor substances, they had also acquired other chemical products, as well as fuses, professional laboratory materials and electrical components.

After several months of investigation, their links with terrorist or radical organisations were ruled out and once the places where those investigated could be manufacturing and storing the explosive mixtures that were suspected of being produced illicitly for unknown purposes were located, these people were arrested.

More than 700 gr. of explosive mixtures (gunpowder) of artisanal manufacture already prepared, 15.5 kg of precursor substances and other chemical products used for the illegal manufacture of explosives, remains of an already exploded “pipe bomb” type explosive device, professional laboratory equipment (electric stirrers, flasks, test tubes, pipettes, heaters, precision balances, etc.) for the synthesis and distillation of chemical mixtures, electronic material for the development of remote ignition systems for explosive devices were seized.

It turns out that one of the detainees had made a homemade explosive device, type “pipe bomb”, which he admitted having used to “scare away” possible thieves in a house located in an isolated area where they had suffered several robberies.

The trade, acquisition, possession and use of chemical precursors of explosives has been restricted and regulated for years in both the European Union and Spain to prevent their diversion for illicit, violent or terrorist purposes; Therefore, for its legal acquisition in our country it is necessary to previously have a licence granted by the Ministry of the Interior through CITCO, which is the National Contact Point on precursors.

The Information Headquarters of the Guardia Civil works closely on this matter. Throughout 2022, more than 396 applications for this type of precursor licences were analysed to rule out that the applicants did not intend to divert these substances for illicit purposes; Likewise, carrying out 59 inspections of establishments that traded in precursors and investigating another 31 suspicious transactions.

In one of these actions, last March 2023 in Montmajor (Barcelona), the Guardia Civil dismantled a clandestine workshop for the illegal manufacture of explosives, making the largest seizure of explosives precursors made so far in our country, in the that almost half a ton of these substances were seized, with which the detainee would have tried to make explosives as dangerous as TATP (called by jihadist terrorists as “the mother of satan”), chloratite or gunpowder.

With the present action, not only has it been prevented that explosive mixtures and illegally manufactured devices could be diverted to the black market, but it has also avoided the existing risk to the life and physical integrity of the people who resided in the places where they were manufactured or used these explosive mixtures in case of accidental explosion during handling or storage.

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