Posted on 09/04/2003 3:55:15 PM PDT by bicycle thug
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Three people, at least two of them from Oregon, are wanted for questioning by the FBI about last week's double bombings at the Emeryville, Calif., headquarters of biotechnology company Chiron Corp.
No one was injured in the blasts early last Thursday, but a group called ``The Revolutionary Cells'' claimed responsibility in an anonymous e-mail and warned that the company's employees may be attacked at their homes.
Animal rights activists have targeted Chiron because of its contracts with Huntingdon Life Sciences, an English company that uses animals to test drugs.
The three people are Bjorn Einertsen, 25, of Portland, Sweet Mensoff, 28, of Eugene and Joani Ruppel, 22, authorities said. It wasn't immediately clear where Ruppel lived.
One listing for a Joni Ruppel in Eugene was disconnected; at a second Eugene number, a woman who answered the phone said it was a wrong number. An FBI spokeswoman in San Francisco did not immediately return calls.
Law enforcement officials said the three are not suspects and won't say what information they have that ties the three together.
But Mensoff, reached at her home in Eugene by The San Francisco Chronicle, denied any involvement in the bombing or the animal rights movement, said she didn't know Einertsen or Ruppel, and said she hadn't been to California or anywhere else outside Oregon this year.
After being told she was wanted for questioning, Mensoff set up an interview Tuesday with the FBI's field office in Eugene.
``I'd rather just go settle it,'' she said.
Einertsen is believed to be the owner of a 1986 brown van that was spotted near the scene. The FBI asked the California Highway Patrol to be on the lookout for the van during the Labor Day weekend, but it has not been stopped anywhere in the state.
Einertsen, who splits his time between Eugene and Portland, could not immediately be reached for comment.
But his mother, who lives in Portland, expressed surprise that her son was wanted for questioning.
``He's interested in ecology, and he goes out in the woods and helps a professor identify plants,'' Ruth Weinstein told the San Jose Mercury-News. ``But I don't think he's active in animal rights groups. He's not particularly active in anything that I know of.''
In 2001, Einertsen pleaded guilty to felony assault charges stemming from a run-in with officers summoned to a complaint of noise at a Portland house party, according to the prosecutor who handled the case.
The FBI believes that the Revolutionary Cells may be a newly formed front or offshoot of the Animal Liberation Front, which has become notorious for campaigns that involve raids on fur companies, mink farms, restaurants and animal research laboratories.
The ALF and its sister group, the Earth Liberation Front, are thought to have committed more than 600 criminal acts in the United States since 1996, according to the FBI. Recent incidents include the vandalizing of sport-utility vehicles in Santa Cruz and the Los Angeles area, the torching of an apartment complex in San Diego and the harassing of a Bay Area chef who specializes in foie gras, which is fattened goose or duck liver.
``There had been a calm period over the past few years, and there has been a cluster of activity in the past month or so,'' FBI spokeswoman LuRae Quy said. ``We're analyzing bomb fragments and are looking at tracing some of the e-mails that have been sent.''
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