The bomb explosion that killed a Palestinian Authority official at his office and home in Prague January was not caused by a safety mechanism in a safe, as previously claimed, the Prague Post reported Monday.
Police initially had ruled out a terrorist act or other foul play, but now everything is open to question, although police still say they are treating the explosion as an accident.
Jamal a Jamal was killed in the blast, and officials immediately downplayed the incident by saying the envoy was moving a safe when it exploded, supposedly because of a mechanism against anyone trying to tamper with its contents.
However, a Palestinian Authority official said at the time that the safe had not been in use for 20 years.
Prague police spokeswoman Andrea Zoulová said that the conclusion that the safe was not the source of the blast “was also drawn from a test carried out within the investigation. It has proved that the explosion did not occur inside the safe.”
Shortly after Jamal was killed, his daughter Rana said she was convinced that her father had been murdered.
Moreover, Czech police look into a suspicion of illegal arms possession as they have found 12 unregistered firearms from the 1980s in the embassy building.
The Palestinian Authority explained that the weapons were gifts from representatives of the then communist Czechoslovakia.