Bomb Cache Found In Brooklyn
NEW YORK - Investigators tried to determine Monday whether a man with a cache of pipe bombs and other weapons at his apartment was targeting synagogues and homes he had defaced in his Brooklyn neighborhood, a ranking police official said Monday.
Officers went to Ivan Ivanov’s apartment after he reported being shot on Sunday evening, police said. Investigators, who said the wound to his finger was self-inflicted, discovered what appeared to be a homemade bomb and several other devices and weapons.
A police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing, said Ivanov told police he planned to use the explosives on a fishing trip, detonating the devices underwater to bring the fish to the surface.
Investigators seized his computer and were searching the files, the official said.
Police said they also discovered Ivanov had spray-painted anti-Semitic graffiti on three houses, two cars and on the staircases of two synagogues in his neighborhood in September.
Ivanov, 37, pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of aggravated harassment and criminal mischief as a hate crime, as well as criminal possession of a weapon and reporting a false incident. Bail was set at $300,000 bond or $150,000 cash, the Brooklyn prosecutor’s office said.
Ivanov’s Legal Aid lawyer did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Police were also trying to reach Ivanov’s roommate, a medical anthropologist and associate professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Residents of the Brooklyn Heights building said the professor was doing research out of the country.
The building and others in the tree-lined neighborhood near the Brooklyn Bridge were evacuated for several hours while the bomb squad investigated early Sunday.
(AP)
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Ivan Ivanoff??? What? Is this a fictional character from a Tolstoy novel? Looks like the cold war is back on. How many spies does comrade Putin have here already?
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:52 am