AFPThe GRU headquarters in Moscow, photo from 2016
NOS News•today, 04:17•Changed today, 06:39
Investigative journalists say they have new evidence about how more than a hundred American officials developed serious health problems in an unknown manner. The so-called Havana syndrome may have been caused by the Russian military intelligence service GRU.
That’s what research platform writes The Insider in collaboration with the German newspaper Der Spiegel and TV program 60 minutes from the American news channel CBS. The journalists rely, among other things, on statements from victims, Russian government documents and travel and location data. Moscow has not yet responded to the accusations.
According to the journalists, Unit 29155 of the GRU has experimented with special weapons. Executives are said to have been decorated for the development of ‘non-lethal acoustic weapons’. These are devices that emit sound and radio frequencies, which can be used against people.
Headache
Victims say they saw officers from the unit around the time they started experiencing symptoms. Online data allegedly determined that the spies were in these places shortly before or during the incidents.
The American officials who received complaints were working abroad at the time. The first cases were reported in 2016 by American and Canadian diplomats in Cuba. Since then, there has been plenty of speculation as to what happened to them, but it has never been fully clarified.
“I felt my head filling up, and a throbbing headache,” says the wife of a US embassy worker. She says she was hit by such an acoustic attack in the Georgian capital Tbilisi in 2021. Some of the victims suffered permanent complaints.
Different conclusion than intelligence services
According to the journalists, the outcome of the investigation is at odds with previous conclusions of American intelligence services. They called it very unlikely that a foreign power has sickened the officials made. According to the CIA, most cases were explained by stress, previously undiagnosed medical conditions, or environmental conditions.
“The new research shows that international intelligence services are incompetent, or that there is a cover-up,” the first victim of the syndrome is quoted by The Insider. The CIA official is not mentioned by name.
2024-04-01 02:17:19
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