Nine people, including six students at secondary school, were arrested yesterday in Hong Kong for allegedly plotting to set off homemade bombs in courts, tunnels and trash cans, as political tensions rise in the territory where China is tightening its grip.
Police said that they were detained on suspicion of engaging in terrorist activity under a National Security Law that Beijing imposed a year ago as part of a crackdown on dissent in the former British colony that has long enjoyed freedoms not seen on the mainland.
Hong Kong authorities have used the law, enacted in response to protests against the government that rocked the territory in 2019, to arrest many prominent democracy advocates. Others have fled abroad as a result.
Photo: AFP
If the allegations are true, the group appears to represent a more radical fringe of the protest movement, which has demanded broader democratic freedoms for Hong Kong just as its liberties are under threat.
Police said that the group was attempting to make the explosive triacetone triperoxide (TATP), which has been widely used in bombings in Europe and elsewhere, in a makeshift laboratory in a hostel.
Police accused the group of planning to use the explosive to bomb courts, cross-harbor tunnels, railways and trash cans on the street “to maximize damage caused to the society.”
Since the 2019 protests, Hong Kong police have arrested several people over alleged bomb plots and for making TATP, including 17 detained that year in overnight raids that also seized explosives and chemicals.
Nine people aged between 15 and 39 were arrested yesterday, Hong Kong National Security Department Senior Superintendent Li Kwai-wah (李桂華) said.
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥) said at a weekly news conference that she hopes members of the public would “openly condemn threats of violence.”
“They should not be wrongly influenced by the idea that ... breaking the law is in order, if you’re trying to achieve a certain cause,” Lam said. “They should not be influenced into thinking that they can find excuses to inflict violence.”
Authorities said they seized equipment and raw materials used to make TATP, as well as a “trace amount” of the explosive.
They said they also found operating manuals and about HK$80,000 (US$10,300) in cash.
Police froze about HK$600,000 in assets that they say might be linked to the plot.
Authorities said that all nine planned to set off the bombs and then leave Hong Kong for good.
The arrests come as China is increasing its control over Hong Kong, despite a promise to protect the territory’s civil liberties for 50 years after its 1997 handover from Britain.
In the most glaring example of that campaign, police arrested at least seven top editors, executives and journalists of the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper and froze its assets, forcing it to close two weeks ago.
Lam yesterday also said that an envelope of “white powder” had been sent to her office.
Police said that the substance was still being analyzed, but that they did not believe it to be dangerous.
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