Thursday, February 12, 2009

Serial package thrower charged

A man has been charged in federal court for allegedly throwing packages into the Chinese consulate in San Francisco on four occasions, incidents that brought out the bomb squad each time.

Aaron Bassler was named in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco that charges him with four counts of "forcibly thrusting an object onto a foreign consulate."

Bassler is accused of throwing packages onto consulate property at 1450 Laguna St. on Jan. 16, Jan. 20, Jan. 30 and Feb. 6. He was arrested after the latest incident when a special agent with the Diplomatic Security Service saw him toss a bag over the fence of the consulate, authorities said.

The packages contained drawings of red stars and writings that referred to the "Martian military" and Chinese weapons designs, Special Agent Edward Stahl wrote in an affidavit.

The San Francisco police bomb squad responded to each incident and confirmed that the packages did not contain explosives, authorities said.

Investigators did not disclose a motive in the case.

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