AddThis

Share |
Showing posts with label Minsk Metro Bombing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Minsk Metro Bombing. Show all posts

Thursday, 14 July 2011

Suspected Minsk Metro Bomber detained in violent Confrontation with Police

Viktor Dvorakovskii, an ethnic Russian Wahhabist convert and prime suspect for the 11 April bombing of the Oktiabr'skaia Minsk Metro station, has been arrested in the settlement of Inozemtsevo in the southern Russian district of Stavropol. The 23-year-old Dvorakovskii, who was born in Dagestan in the city of Makhachkala, became a convert to ‘radical Islam’ at the age of 20, and has been evading the Russian special services since they began searching for him in March after he accidentally blew up his own flat with an improvised explosive device. His wife and three-year-old child were in the flat at the time and were wounded.

Viktor Dvorakovskii: the Minsk Metro Bomber?
(Picture: Itar-TASS)


According to Izvestiia, last night’s detention of Dvorakovskii occurred quite by chance when a local police patrol spotted a man behaving in a suspicious manner who then attempted to hide himself in some bushes next to a kindergarten. Upon being asked for his identity documents, he threatened to blow up the police and promptly threw a bomb at them which landed to the side of the group concussing one of the officers. The patrol opened fire and a second device exploded blowing off Dvorakovskii’s right hand. A local resident told reporters how she heard Dvorakovskii yell “Allahu Akbar” before the sounds of two detonations rent the night air. At the time of writing, the latest reports stated that he lay comatose in hospital, bearing wounds sustained from the second bomb blast and a number of small-arms rounds. What was left of his right hand was amputated by surgeons.

At the time of his arrest it was thought that Dvorakovskii was planning an imminent suicide attack, albeit a relatively small-scale one. Recently, it had been thought that he was already dead, following a suicide bombing in Makhachkala on 10 May this year. This took place in similar circumstances to last night’s encounter, with a police patrol happening upon a man “acting suspiciously” who then detonated an explosive device killing one of the officers. Dvorakovskii, who is reported as having received paramilitary training alongside other jihadists in the northern Caucasus, is also said to have had links with a number of other perpetrators of Islamic terrorist acts in Russia, including another ethnic Russian Wahhabist – Vitalii Razdobud’ko – who was responsible for the Domodedovo Airport bombing as well as a double suicide bombing alongside his wife in Gubden, Dagestan on 14 February this year. This bombing killed three policemen and wounded 26 others. Razdobud’ko, his wife Maria Khoresheva and a number of others, had also been involved in a foiled plot to bomb multiple targets in Moscow this past New Year’s Eve.

The cases of Dvorakovskii, Razdobud’ko and his wife illustrate that what lies at the root of Muslim terrorism is Islamic doctrine, not the straw men of ‘racism’ and ‘relative deprivation’ which the British mainstream media routinely wheel out by way of ‘explanation’. It is depressing that ethnic Russians find themselves under attack from this common threat, but if Dvorakovskii was indeed responsible for the Minsk bombing, it is good news indeed that he has been apprehended and now lies in a coma. The members of the Russian police patrol who tackled him must be congratulated for their bravery. May they have every success in hunting down and eliminating all others who follow this vicious jihadist ideology.

Monday, 11 April 2011

Explosion in Minsk Metro

According to Izvestiia, an explosion has occurred at the Minsk Metro station of Oktiabr'skaia. It took place during the rush hour and is reported has having caused seven fatalities. A further 35 people have been injured. President Lukashenko has called the emergency services into action to deal with the situation, but who or what was behind the blast has yet to be declared or ascertained. Belarus has not hitherto experienced Islamist extremism, but it is unclear what possible motive any other group could have for targeting Belarussian commuters. This blast comes a little over a year after the March suicide bombings on the Moscow Metro carried out by Chechen 'black widows'. Belarus of course has no Muslim population to speak of, but Lukashenko has very close and warm ties with Russia, and as such, may have incurred the ire of Islamists from the Caucasus.

A later report in Nezavisimaia gazeta claims that there were possibly two explosions, and that 50 people are now thought to have been wounded. Novaia gazeta states that the explosion(s) occurred at 18:00 local time. This is the first such act of terrorism to hit the Minsk Metro, although a bomb detonated at an independence day celebration on the night of 3rd - 4th July 2008 which injured 46 people. Police at the time were looking for a dark-complexioned man, but nobody was apprehended for the crime and no motive has ever been established. By 23:18 Moscow time the number of casualties had been upwardly revised to 11 dead and around 100 wounded. Lukashenko was also reported as speculating that there could be a link between today's explosion and that of 3 July 2008, and as having set up an investigative group to examine the evidence for such a connection.

Life News Russia cites a revised figure of 80 people wounded. Video footage from the scene of the explosion is displayed below:



Return here for updates as they become available.