Multi-time motocross champion sentenced to 4.5 years in jail over explosion near KGB office

09.04.201413:38

A professional woman motocross rider was found guilty of detonating a homemade explosive device near the regional office of the Committee for State Security (KGB) in Vitsebsk in 2012.

A district court in Vitsebsk sentenced the 44-year-old multi-time Belarusian motocross champion to four and a half years in a minimum security correctional institution. The woman admitted her guilt explaining that she had intended to ‘put KGB officers into a panic’ because the KGB had ignored her demand to detect those who had set off an explosion in the doorway of her apartment house a few years before.

The woman, who worked as a mail carrier, had previous convictions of property damage and disorderly conduct.

According to the KGB press office, a ‘primitive homemade pyrotechnic device” went off at 6:48 p.m. on February 11, 2012, breaking the glass of two windows. The bomb was reportedly hidden inside a metal can of between 0.25 and 0.33 liters and consisted of a cardboard or plastic tube packed with between 50 and 70 grams of a pyrotechnic mixture. The bomb did not contain nails, metal balls or any other dangerous objects.

Firstly three persons were detained on the basis of testimonial evidence. Shortly before the detention one of them had allegedly phoned the KGB department and untowardly criticised the authorities. But later the supposed criminal was released after being screened.

Vitsebsk is notorious for incidents of such kind. In 2005 the blast resulted in fifty persons injured. Later it was Dzmitry Kanavalau and Uladzislau Kavaliou who were found guilty of it.