Poland reveals foiled bomb plot

According to information released on Tuesday, Polish officials arrested a man on November 9 in Krakow. He has been charged with planning a terrorist attack.

Prosecutors said the man had collected a small arsenal of explosives and firearms. He was apparently planning to detonate a large car bomb outside the parliament building (pictured above).

"The suspect does not belong to a political group or party," prosecutor Piotr Krason said at a news conference. "He claims that he was acting on nationalistic, anti-Semitic and xenophobic motives."

The attack was meant to take place while parliament was in session and President Bronislaw Komorowski, Prime Minister Donald Tusk, and government ministers were in the building.

"He believed that the current social and economic situation in our country was moving in the wrong direction because virtually all the government positions and positions of power were filled by people who he described as 'foreign,'" Krason said. "They are not - in his opinion - true Poles."

'Fascination' with Breivik

Authorities recovered explosives in a nationwide search, and also found a video of a test explosion in a wooded area that the suspect had allegedly conducted.

Krason said the suspect, a university professor who worked with explosive materials, had confessed to some of the charges against him, which could carry a sentence of up to five years in prison.

In a news conference on Tuesday, Tusk said the suspect "did not hide his fascination" with Anders Behring Breivik, the man whose bomb attack and shooting spree left 77 people dead in Norway last year.

Tusk added that Polish authorities were assisted in their investigation by analyzing Breivik's contacts abroad.

mz/dr (dpa, Reuters)