Alexander Giannakakis arrested in Sweden, accused of misleading Massachusetts authorities investigating 2019 fires at Jewish institutions
A 35-year-old man who previously lived in Quincy was arrested in Sweden on Wednesday for deliberately misleading authorities who conducted an investigation into fires that were started at Jewish institutions in Massachusetts in May 2019, the American prosecutor’s office states.
Alexander Giannakakis, 35, was arrested on Wednesday by Swedish authorities in a suburb of Stockholm, says the American lawyer.
Giannakakis was indicted by a federal grand jury in Boston on several charges related to defrauding authorities in an investigation involving domestic terrorism. The United States plans to request his extradition to be prosecuted in Boston.
In February 2020, authorities said, Giannakaki’s younger brother became the main suspect in an investigation into four fires that had been set up at Jewish-related institutions in the Boston area. The first occurred on May 11, 2019 at a Chabad Center in Arlington. A second fire broke out at the same location on May 16, 2019. A third fire broke out in a Chabad Center in Needham and the fourth during the evening of May 26, 2019 in a Jewish affiliated company in Chelsea.
Authorities said Giannakaki’s younger brother was hospitalized about six months after the fourth fire and remained in a coma until his death.
After his brother’s death, the American lawyer said that Giannakakis left the United States with his younger brother’s electronic devices and papers and brought them to Sweden.
In March 2020, Giannakakis returned to the United States and was asked by investigators about his younger brother’s connection to the fires and whether the family had a storage unit.
Giannakakis told investigators his parents had a storage unit at a nearby storage facility but withheld information about other units, authorities said.
Authorities said Giannakakis knew of other places. They said that the night before he had visited a second unit in the same storage facility, which contained items belonging to his younger brother, including t-shirts with a swastika depicted on the front, a box with his brother’s name on it, his brother’s passport, a notebook with his brother’s name on and a swastika drawn inside, and a black backpack containing a bottle of cyanide.
Later in the investigation, authorities said Giannakakis went to the second storage unit in March and removed relevant items, including the backpack and the cyanide bottle.
Shortly afterwards, the authorities said, Giannakakis left the United States for Sweden and has not returned since.
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