Suspected arrested in Sweden for obstructing investigation into arson in Massachusetts
(February 17, 2022) / JNS) A former Massachusetts resident has been charged with obstructing an investigation into fires at Jewish affiliated institutions in May 2019, U.S. Attorney’s Office sa on Wednesday.
Alexander Giannakakis, 35, formerly of Quincy, Massachusetts, was arrested by Swedish authorities in Stockholm at the request of US authorities, who plan to request his extradition so he can be prosecuted in Boston.
Giannakakis was indicted by a federal grand jury in Boston for “making false statements in a case involving domestic terrorism; forging, concealing and concealing an essential fact in a matter involving domestic terrorism by trick, plan and device; concealing records in a federal investigation; manipulation of documents and objects; and manipulation of an official procedure. “
His younger brother was the main suspect in an investigation of four fires in Chabad centers and a Jewish-affiliated company that took place in the Boston areas of Arlington, Needham and Chelsea in May 2019. He was hospitalized and in a coma since November 2019, and remained so to his death.
Giannakakis is said to have taken his younger brother’s electronic devices and papers to Sweden. In March 2020, when Giannakakis returned to the United States with that electronics, investigators asked him about his brother’s ties to the fires and whether his family had a storage unit. Giannakakis is said to have said that his parents had one that he kept and had access to.
After a search of the unit, Giannakakis told investigators that there was nowhere else his brother would have kept property.
The indictment alleges that Giannakakis deliberately lied to investigators about a second storage unit at the same facility, which contained items belonging to his younger brother, including swastika shirts, a notebook with a swastika drawn inside and a backpack containing a bottle of cyanide.
Giannakakis is also said to have removed from his other storage unit his brother’s items that were relevant to the ongoing arson investigation, the indictment stated. He later traveled to Sweden and has not returned.