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World Jewish News
Explosive Placed in Lutsk Synagogue
03.02.2009
On February 2, at about 9 am, an explosive was discovered in the air vent of Lutsk synagogue’s basement.
"Every morning I make my rounds through the building," Sergey Shvardovskiy, director of the Jewish Community Center located in the building of the synagogue, told the Jewish News Agency, "Suddenly I saw in the basement window a 5-liter bottle filled with a white powder and connected with wires to a clockwork and accumulator battery. When I saw that the mechanism was on, I immediately evacuated the employees and called the police. We also turned off the gas and boiler-room."
The officers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs arrived immediately, cordoned off three neighboring streets, whereupon sappers, who arrived in the nick of time from the Ministry of Emergency Situations, neutralized the explosive.
Three streets in Lutsk centre were shut off to traffic for at least two hours. According to Sergey Shvardovskiy, the employees of the Jewish Community Center used to face with the manifestations of anti-Semitism with an unfortunate regularity before.
"Approximately three times a month Stars of Judah on gibbets, fascist swastikas and various anti-Semitic slogans appear on the walls of the synagogue. We clean it all, but this is our first large-scale emergency. People are scared of coming to work," he says. The substance appeared to be a highly explosive mixture of ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder. This was reported to the Jewish News Agency by a source in the law-enforcement authorities. The explosion attempt in Lutsk Jewish Community Center is being actively investigated by the Economic Crime Department of the militia and the Security Service of Ukraine.
Nevertheless, law-enforcement authorities seem to be working too hard to find some economic or internal Jewish grounds for an attempted terrorist attack having ample evidence of being anti-Semitic.
For instance, it is reported that yesterday in Lutsk the police were looking for the local Chabad rabbi Moshe Matusovsky, who is currently abroad, as they suspected possible conflict between him and the reformist community located in the building of the synagogue.
And the employees under attack were being questioned about the economic activities of the organization and its funding, as well as the religious subtleties of Judaism, for instance, why Shabbat is celebrated on Friday.
Meanwhile, the police withhold official comment.
"The investigation of the occurrence is in progress," as the representative of the Public Relations Centre of the Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Volynsky region Anna Pavlovskaya shortly commented on the situation.
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