New investigation blames Russia for Havana syndrome

A Pentagon investigation indicates that a secret Russian unit had used a sonic weapon to inflict serious symptoms on US employees serving abroad, according to a media consortium report. A mysterious illness suffered in recent years by employees in the diplomatic, political and security sectors of the United States, known as Havana syndrome, was allegedly caused by secret activities promoted by Russia with the use of a sonic weapon, according to a new investigation carried out by the Pentagon.

The reports began to raise suspicions in 2016, when diplomats and staff at US embassies in some countries suffered severe episodes of migraines, nausea and brain injuries. The syndrome was so named due to its initial incidence in the Cuban capital.

The United States withdrew a large part of its employees from Havana, but similar reports soon began to emerge in other countries such as China, Germany, Russia, Australia and even Washington.

In 2020, a study concluded that the syndrome’s symptoms were likely caused by exposure to microwave radiation, but in March 2023 a report released by the White House concluded that it was “very unlikely” that the cases were the work of a foreign state. – although no alternative theory has been put forward.

Now, another investigation, of which one of the main responsible is the United States Department of Defense, and revealed this Monday (01/04) by the German magazine Der Spiegel, the program 60 Minutes on the US network CBS and the vehicle Latvian investigative The Insider, indicates that the origin of the disease would be in Moscow’s actions.

The report concludes that, contrary to what was thought, the first cases may not have happened in Havana in 2016, but rather before. “There were probably attacks two years earlier, such as in Frankfurt, Germany, when a US government employee working at the local consulate lost consciousness after feeling like he was hit by a kind of energy beam,” says the investigation.

Fainting and memory and concentration problems

One of the authors of the investigation, Greg Edgreen, a lieutenant colonel in the US Army, claims that the “Russian nexus” is the common denominator in all cases, and that the Russian authorities would have even rewarded a military unit, 29155, for the good work on this issue. Members of this Russian group were said to have been in all the locations where attacks were reported, the report states.

Unit 29155 is responsible for operations abroad and has already been identified as responsible for several incidents, including an attempted death by poisoning former Russian double agent Serguei Skripal in the United Kingdom.

According to Edgreen, American investigators had set a standard that was too demanding to be able to bring a formal accusation against Moscow because, among other reasons, this would imply facing some “inconvenient truths”, such as that the United States had failed to protect of your staff.

Although no plausible reason was initially found for the incidents, in 2021 the US Congress approved the so-called Havana Law, which authorized the State Department, the CIA and other government agencies to compensate employees affected by the disease during diplomatic missions. .

One of the people affected, identified as Carrie, told the CBS program 60 Minutes how she experienced the alleged attack that initially caused her to faint and then problems with memory and concentration. The FBI agent reported that she was at her home in the state of Florida when, suddenly, she heard a loud sound in her right ear and, at the same time, her cell phone’s battery began to swell, to the point of breaking the phone’s casing. device.

Another incident happened in 2023, in Lithuania, during the NATO leaders’ summit. According to sources consulted by the media outlets that revealed the investigation, a senior US Department of Defense official was attacked.

Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Peskov called the report’s conclusions “unfounded” and denied that Russia was behind the so-called Havana syndrome. “This issue has been in the media for many years now, and from the beginning it has been linked to the Russian side. But no one has ever published any convincing evidence, so this is all just an unfounded accusation,” he said.

bl (Lusa, ots)