WEF employee falsely accused of plotting to kill Trump
An employee of the Swiss-based World Economic Forum (WEF) was arrested in January after an anonymous email accused her of planning an attack on US President Donald Trump at the WEF’s annual meeting in Davos.
However, the suspicions were not confirmed by the investigation, the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland (OAG) told the Swiss News Agency Keystone-ATS on Wednesday.
The case came to light following an investigation by Tamedia and the German television broadcaster ARD. The email was sent on January 21 to the US Embassy in Bern, shortly before Trump’s arrival in Switzerland.
The woman, an IT specialist of Iranian origin, was portrayed as an agent who had hatched a plot to assassinate the tycoon. The OAG subsequently opened proceedings and ordered an investigation.
The woman at the centre of the affair had only been working for a few months at the WEF headquarters in Coligny, canton Geneva, and was not accredited for the event in Graubünden. She was arrested at her workplace and questioned for over six hours. Her mobile phones and computer were seized and her social media activity was examined, but no evidence of espionage or the planning of terrorist acts was found.
“The allegations contained in the email were not substantiated in any respect,” the OAG stated in its response to Keystone-ATS. The case was therefore closed.
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Fired
However, in the meantime, the IT specialist was dismissed by the WEF. According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the reasons given were not directly linked to the investigation. The WEF declined to comment on the reasons for her dismissal, citing the confidentiality required in personnel matters.
A separate investigation has now been launched in Geneva to identify the sender of the anonymous email. The account from which the message originated had been created just a few minutes before it was sent and has not been used since.
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Translated from Italian, reviewed by an English Department journalist.
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