BELARUS: Investigators show CCTV images of a suspect allegedly planting a bomb in Minsk metro

Record ID: 730717

  • Title: BELARUS: Investigators show CCTV images of a suspect allegedly planting a bomb in Minsk metro
  • Date: 15th April 2011
  • Summary: NEWS CONFERENCE IN PROGRESS
  • Embargoed: 30th April 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Belarus, Belarus
  • Country: Belarus
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVAD4QCJJB2ZKT8BRJI2YOOWEH53
  • Story Text: Belarussian security officials have detained five people in connection with a deadly metro bomb attack, Deputy Prosecutor General Andrei Shved said on Thursday (April 14).
    President Alexander Lukashenko ordered opposition politicians to be questioned after a bomb attack in a crowded metro station in the capital Minsk killed 12 and injured about 150 people on Monday.
    A day after officials said they had detained three people, including the man whom they accused of planting and detonating the bomb, Shved said two more had been taken into police custody.
    "At the moment I can inform the public that we have detained five people suspected of committing this crime. Two have been taken into custody, the one who carried out the terrorist act and the one who assisted him," Andrei Shved told journalists.
    He added all five were Belarussians under the age of 30, but provided no other details.
    During the news conference Shved showed Journalists CCTV images of a suspect carrying a big bag and gave a detailed description of suspect's moves.
    Analysts say Lukashenko, an authoritarian leader who has run the former Soviet republic since 1994, could use the blast as an excuse to crack down on dissent at a time when Minsk struggles to keep the Soviet-style economy afloat.
    The U.N. Security Council condemned on Wednesday what it called an "apparent terrorist attack" on a metro station in Belarus, phraseology that appeared to reflect uncertainty over who was behind it.
    Two of the detained suspects -- an electrician and a lathe-operator -- confessed to carrying out the attack and admitted to two earlier bomb attacks, Lukashenko said on Wednesday. Smaller blasts in 2008 and 2005, which also have been blamed on some of this week's detainees, caused no deaths.
    Monday's attack was the first lethal bombing in Belarus's post-Soviet history.
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