O. Pekarski: THE CASE OF TERRORIST ATTACK IN METRO WAS SOLVED TO A LARGE EXTENT THANKS TO THE LONG-TERM WORK ON THE EXPLOSION CASE ON 4TH JULY 2008

Detection of the terrorist attack on April 11th, 2011 has become possible to a large extent thanks to many years’ work on the explosion case on July 4th, 2008 in Minsk, said Acting Minister of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Belarus Oleg Pekarski at the press conference.

Detection of the terrorist attack on April 11^th, 2011 has become possible to a large extent thanks to many years’ work on the explosion case on July 4^th, 2008 in Minsk, said Acting Minister of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Belarus Oleg Pekarski at the press conference.

He expressed gratitude to all Belarusian citizens who “on their own, without any delay, underwent fingerprint identification”. “So far, we have dactylographed 2.5 million citizens. The data obtained made it possible to match 12 396 fingerprints with the ones found at the scenes of unsolved crimes. These are 119 murders, 189 cases of grave bodily harm, more than 10 thousand cases of theft,” said Acting Minister of Internal Affairs.

He also noted that “many mass media, denouncing these actions, seriously hampered” the work of internal affairs agencies.

Commenting on the circumstances of detaining Konovalov and Kovaliov, Oleg Pekarski said that it was the professionalism of special services which made it possible to do it just 27 hours after the attack. The photo of Konovalov, made from a still frame taken by CCTV cameras, has been distributed to all police officers. We blocked all the stations and were preparing an appeal to the public for help in “establishing a particularly dangerous criminal” – a special video footage was being prepared for this purpose. But Konovalov was detected by specially trained people who are trained to recognize a person by their distinctive features in a large mass of people.

“At the time of the arrest Konovalov was in a state of extreme alcoholic intoxication. And only at 5 in the morning he began to testify on his own. We sent for experts who through fingerprints confirmed his involvement in the explosion in 2008. Then it was immediately decided to urgently pass Konovalov under the jurisdiction of a specially created investigation group. At the time of the arrest we only suspected him. Confirmation was received only after his fingerprints matched,” said Oleg Pekarsky.