Czech finance minister becomes 2nd government official to be sent envelope with deadly poison

PRAGUE – An envelope mailed to the Czech Republic’s finance minister contained poison, the second such case in a week, an official said Monday.

Tests conducted on the suspicious envelope to minister Andrej Babis detected “a deadly amount of a dangerous poison,” according to Radek Pokornik, a spokesman for the National Institute for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Protection.

Pokornik declined to give further details about the letter received Thursday, citing a police request.

Tests conducted by the institute found that an envelope mailed to Interior Minister Milan Chovanec on Tuesday contained a life-threatening amount of cyanide-like material.

Both envelopes were intercepted before anyone could be exposed.

Pokornik said another suspicious envelope mailed to the presidential office last week did not contain poison.

It was not immediately clear why the two ministers were targeted, but Chovanec said that could be related to his government’s crackdown on illegal drugs or its assistance to the Kurdish military in its battle against Islamic State militants in Iraq.

In September, the Czech Foreign Ministry, the Cabinet ministers’ building, and the presidential office also received suspicious letters, but they contained no poison, officials said.