- The Observer, Sunday March 3 2002
But the MSP Mike Rumbles, who believes he and his assistant were targeted by the Scottish National Liberation Army because they are both English, said the group was 'extremely dangerous' and could no longer be treated as a joke.
The packages contained corrosive caustic soda disguised as aromatherapy oil. At least one was sent from Glasgow. In a telephone call to Scotland Yard on Friday afternoon, a man claiming to be from the SNLA said that 16 packages had been sent.Only two have been detected.
The Prime Minister's wife is thought to have been the target of the package sent to 10 Downing Street. It was detected at an off-site screen ing centre set up after 11 September.
The other package arrived at the home of a female assistant to Rumbles, in Banochry, Aberdeenshire. He said he was 'extremely angry at this despicable act'. Rumbles said he had been tipped off by a newspaper about the danger and managed to warn his assistant before she opened the package on Friday.
Rumbles said: 'Although I speak with an English accent and I was born in the North- East of England, I have been an adopted Scot for many years. My children are Scottish, my wife's family are Scots and I am proud to represent West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine in the Scottish Parliament.'
Police said they believed the packages came from 'one disturbed individual working on his own'. The two padded envelopes found on Friday contained bottles labelled as eucalyptus. The liquid was actually sodium hydroxide, commonly known as caustic soda, which can cause permanent scarring to skin.
Scotland Yard described the fake oil and instructions on how to use it as 'cynically dangerous'.
A police spokesman said: 'We are urging people who may receive a package containing a liquid substance through the post in suspicious circumstances to contact 999 immediately. We believe this is especially applicable to members of the political parties and their members of staff.'
It is still unclear whether the Scottish National Liberation Army was responsible. It was formed in 1980 by a Glasgow-born former soldier, Adam Busby, 53, who declared war on 'mass English immigration'.
Busby now lives in Dublin, where he has formed the Scottish Separatist Group to campaign for an independent Scotland outside the European Union. In an interview last year he claimed he had no longer any connection with the SNLA.
In the 1980s the SNLA made a series of hoax bomb calls and death threats to the royal family, but struggled to be taken seriously.
Dubbed the 'tartan terrorists', the group was linked to letters sent last summer to St Andrews University, where Prince William is studying, which falsely claimed to contain anthrax.
The Scottish National Party, which has no links with the SNLA, condemned the sending of the packages. Party leader John Swinney, speaking in Perth, said: 'Every right-thinking person will unreservedly condemn this pathetic attack.'
