Photographs of the fire caused by a suspected Russian incendiary device at a DHL facility in Birmingham in July have backed up intelligence assessments that the blast was strong enough to have brought down a cargo plane.
One image appears to show when the booby-trapped item, hidden in a massage device, caught fire. A distinctive bright light emerges from the top of a crate of parcels being moved around the site on an electric vehicle.
A second image shows the crate a few metres away being engulfed by the blaze, the light of which is consistent with a fire caused by a magnesium-based device, on the ground just outside the warehouse in Minworth, Birmingham.
The markings on the ground in the photographs match satellite images of the DHL site, and sources familiar with the incident indicated they depicted the scene, which remains under investigation by counter-terrorism police.
One of the pictures was first published by the Wall Street Journal last month, but the fire was not identified as having taken place in Birmingham. A similar incident at a DHL site in Leipzig in late July involved a parcel sent from Lithuania that was also said to have been destined for the UK.
In September, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, Thomas Haldenwang, told the Bundestag that, had the Leipzig package started burning during a flight, “it would have resulted in a crash”.
In the Birmingham incident, the package reached the UK by air before catching light on the ground.
According to experts, using magnesium in an incendiary device suggests a desire to cause damage. Magnesium fires are difficult to put out and are worsened if water is applied. Special dry powder extinguishers are used instead.
Though German authorities have publicly discussed the fire at Leipzig, British police have only released one statement, acknowledging in October that the Birmingham fire had taken place three months earlier on 22 July, amid suspicion that it was part of a Europe-wide Russian arson campaign described by MI5 as reckless.
The UK statement confirmed that counter-terrorism police were investigating and said: “On Monday 22 July, a package at the location caught alight. It was dealt with by staff and the local fire brigade at the time and there were no reports of any injuries or significant damage caused.”
Though police inquiries are continuing, there has been no public examination of the implications for aviation or public safety, to the surprise of some European investigators who believe the UK is at the heart of the sabotage case and should be more overtly concerned.
Four people were arrested in Poland in October after two incendiary devices were found in the country. Investigators accused the suspects of trying to use “camouflaged explosives and dangerous materials” in Europe – to test whether a similar campaign could be conducted in the US and Canada.
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Andrew Mitchell, the MP for Sutton Coldfield, where the DHL warehouse is based, indicated that he had been privately reassured. “I am happy that all the necessary work that can be done has been done to protect my constituents in Minworth and all of us,” he said.
When another Conservative MP, Julian Lewis, raised the topic in the Commons in October with Lucy Powell, the leader of the house, she said she would “encourage the home secretary to consider giving us a security update” if the topic was not picked up in ministerial questions. Searches of Hansard, the parliamentary record, do not indicate it was picked up again.
A DHL cargo plane crashed in Vilnius, Lithuania, on 22 November, killing a pilot and injuring three others, prompting speculation that the incident could be linked to Russian sabotage.
On Monday, the Lithuanian prosecutor general’s office said its inquiries into the crash were continuing, but that it had no evidence to classify the case as anything other than “improper maintenance or repair”.
Parliamentary oversight of the UK’s spy agencies is conducted by the intelligence and security committee, but it has yet to be formally constituted or its members nominated five months after the general election. Similar gaps emerged after the 2015 and 2017 elections – though the wait after the 2019 election was nearly eight months.
