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Five held over subway bombing

Five people have been arrested in connection with Monday's subway bomb attack in Minsk, Deputy Prosecutor General Andrey Shved told reporters in the Belarusian capital on April 14, BelaPAN said.

He said that one of the arrested people was a man suspected of planting the bomb and detonating it and another was his suspected accomplice.

More than a thousand pieces of evidence have been collected by investigators, Mr. Shved said. "We have found the site where the explosive materials and the bomb that was detonated by the terrorist at the Kastrychnitskaya subway station were made. Evidence has been discovered at the site, including components, fragments, parts, which, when put together, show us how, at what time and with what components the explosive device was made," he noted.

The deputy prosecutor general said that the radio-controlled bomb had been made outside Minsk but declined to elaborate.

At the news conference reporters were shown footage from subway surveillance cameras, which showed the suspected perpetrator carrying a black holdall bag.

According to Mr. Shved, investigators examined footage from surveillance cameras inside and outside subway stations and managed to establish where the suspect had walked into the subway. The man was arrested in the vicinity of that station.

The man's face was caught on a camera installed in a street as he was walking home after the bombing, the official said.

He stressed that investigators had enough evidence to believe that the arrested man was the perpetrator, who he said made the bombs that went off in Vitsyebsk in 2005 and during an Independence Day concert in Minsk in July 2008.

He described the arrested people as under-30-year-old Belarusian citizens.

Belarusian investigators working on the case are being helped by Russian and Israeli experts, Mr. Shved noted.