A Chemical Dry Run?

As a pack-a-day smoker, Beata Zvástová, a 43-year-old manager of a Bratislava post office, is no stranger to sudden coughing fits. But what she felt during her Sept. 23 shift was no smoker’s cough. “I felt as if my air tube was about to stick together,” she says. “I kept trying to clear my throat.” When she saw her colleagues were also choking, she called the police. Last week, the Slovak Interior Ministry confirmed that Zvástová’s post office had been attacked by a mixture of chloropicrin and phosgene, two chemicals used during World War I as choking agents. A second attack occurred at a bank in the same building four days later. In neither case was the toxic concentration high enough to cause permanent injury.

But it was enough to put the government on the alert. European terrorism experts tell Time that the attacks do not suggest jihadist terrorists, who tend to maximize damage and casualties. However, if the attacks turn out to be acts of terrorism, they would be Europe’s first using toxic chemicals, experts say. Police have yet to make any arrests. Forensic psychiatrist Svetozár Droba says the absence of claims of responsibility afterward suggests the work of a psychopath or prankster. “It most likely wasn’t a terrorist,” he says. “But we cannot rule out that this was a test for a much worse attack to come.”