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The 27-year-old suspect is believed to be behind two arson attacks targeting construction houses in 2024: one on 23 May in Warsaw and another a week later in Radom. Both fires were swiftly extinguished by emergency services.
Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) said the Colombian man was acting on Russian orders.
"It has been confirmed that Russian intelligence services, using the Telegram messenger, systematically and on a large scale recruited individuals of Latin American origin with military experience," the agency said in a statement.
The man is currently in Czechia, where he was arrested for setting fire to a bus depot and plotting a similar attack in a shopping mall. It later emerged that he was also involved in such operations in Poland.
According to Poland’s foreign ministry, the suspect “faces a life sentence in prison, while over 30 other individuals suspected of cooperating with Russian intelligence have been detained.”
The ABW said the individuals were tasked with “conducting reconnaissance of designated locations, setting fire to selected targets, and documenting the resulting damage.” The collected footage was then “used by Russian-language media for disinformation and propaganda purposes”, the Polish agency added.
Authorities said the attacks match the modus operandi observed in other recent incidents across Central and Eastern Europe.