Eerder op TPOok: Noord-Koreaanse ambassade Madrid leeggeroofd door mysterieuze groep mannen
Een groep die zich inzet voor de omverwerping van de Noord-Koreaanse leider Kim Jong-un heeft de verantwoordelijkheid opgeëist voor een overval op de ambassade van Noord-Korea in Madrid. De groep zegt ‘informatie van enorme potentiële waarde’ met de FBI te hebben gedeeld.
De inval in de ambassade gebeurde afgelopen maand enkele dagen voor de topontmoeting tussen Kim en de Amerikaanse president Donald Trump in Hanoi.
When Spanish police arrived at the embassy in the middle of the raid, Hong Chang managed to ward them off by pretending to be a diplomat, the Spanish newspaper El País reported.
Donning a traditional jacket with a Kim Jong-un lapel badge, he persuaded officers he was a senior North Korean diplomat and that everything was normal inside the compound. Hours later, he was on his way to Lisbon, where he caught a flight to New York and five days later sought out FBI officials.
Reuters quoted a judicial source as saying that de la Mata believes all of the identified suspects fled to the US after the raid, adding that he would request their extradition to Spain. The suspects face up to 28 years in prison.
According to the high court documents, the dissidents, armed with knives and fake guns, forced their way into the embassy and made off with a mobile phone, computers, hard disks and USB pen drives.
Three of the intruders, identifying themselves as members of a human rights group seeking the liberation of North Korea, took the embassy’s commercial attaché, So Yun-sok, into the basement and encouraged him to defect. When he refused, the men tied him up and left him in the room, the documents said.
