Parliament’s Security Committee to look into shredded intelligence report at Prague Castle

The Security Committee in the Chamber of Deputies is planning to look into why the Office of the President shredded an intelligence report on the involvement of Russian secret agents in the 2014 explosions in a munitions depot in Vrbětice, Moravia. Czech Radio and Respekt.cz reported on Saturday that, according to three unnamed sources, detectives had found that the document had been shredded when they wanted to analyse it for fingerprints and traces of DNA to ascertain who it had been handled by. The Office of the President reportedly told them that the document had been shredded in November of last year.

The head of the president’s office, Vratislav Mynář, confirmed that the intelligence report had been shredded, but denied having had access to it. Mynář, as well as others in the president’s close circle of aides, does not have security clearance for access to classified information.

The 2014 explosions at the munitions depot killed two people and caused close to a billion crowns in damages, disrupting life in nearby villages. Czech intelligence traced the blasts to two agents from the Russian military intelligence service GRU who were in the close vicinity at the time. The Czech Republic expelled 18 Russian embassy staffers shortly after.