PRAGUE: Czech police said yesterday they have arrested two people suspected of being responsible for the recent wave of poisoning from methanol-tainted bootleg liquor that has killed 25 people.
Police claimed that the two suspects had deliberately introduced a lethal mixture of methanol and ethanol into the Czech liquor market.
“We know about the source and how the alcohol got to the market,” Czech police chief Martin Cervicek told reporters.
Prosecutor Roman Kafka added that “two people are being prosecuted for endangering the public” and face 12-20 years in prison or life sentences if convicted.
In late August or early September, “they deliberately produced a strongly contaminated mixture of methanol and ethanol,” he said.
“They deliberately mixed them and gave the mixture to a person... they knew to be a spirits distributor, knowing this brutal mixture would be further mixed with spirits and sent into distribution,” Kafka added.
Since early September, the wave of methanol poisoning has killed 25 people and sent dozens to hospital across the Czech Republic, some of them in serious condition and placed in artificial comas. Others have gone blind.
“We now register 25 dead, almost 40 hospitalised, 42 charged and 22 held in custody,” police spokeswoman Stepanka Zatloukalova said yesterday.
The wave of poisoning led Czech authorities to impose a ban on domestic liquor sales on September 14, followed by an exports ban a week later.
AFP
