Dmitry Konovalov is a Belarusian who launched a terrorist attack in the Minsk metro in 2011. He was also found guilty of organizing explosions at the celebration of Independence Day of Belarus and the attacks in Vitebsk in 2005. He was sentenced to death. The sentence is carried out.
Terrorist Biography
Dmitry Konovalov was born in Vitebsk in 1986. His parents were engaged in his upbringing. He did not communicate with his grandparents, although they lived nearby. In the summer after school, usually stayed in the city.
Of great importance in his fate was a fascination with chemistry, which appeared in the 9th grade. He showed himself well in this subject, and even won at the Olympics.
Having received secondary education, Dmitry Konovalov, whose photo is in this article, received a respite from the army, since with a rather high growth of 182 cm he weighed only 68 kg. Devoting a year to laziness, he entered a vocational technical school for a cutter. But he soon left school, as he considered the profession to be too female.
He studied at the turner, but from there he was expelled for systematic drunkenness and absenteeism. Despite the fact that he did not receive a diploma, he nevertheless got a job at the factory and mastered this profession already in the workshop.
First explosions
It is known that the first explosions Dmitry Konovalov made back in 1999. Then he was 13 years old.
In 2000, together with a friend Vladislav Kovalev, convicted and executed with him, organized more than a dozen explosions. They were even tried under the article "Petty Hooliganism". Most often, they installed explosives on the stairwells of apartment buildings and near porches, damaging windows and doors.
Kovalev has been his friend since childhood. They studied in the same class, and lived in the neighborhood. Mostly they talked only among themselves. After school, the craving for explosions only intensified. Mostly they got information from the Internet. In 2004, they staged a homemade bomb explosion near the Grishany train station. Because of him, an accidental cyclist almost died.
Terrorist attack in Vitebsk
In 2005, 19-year-old Dmitry Konovalov, along with Vladislav Kovalev, buried a metal can in a flower bed near a bus stop. It was stuffed with bolts and nails.
On the evening of the same day, they launched the bomb. It was rush hour, but fortunately only two passers-by were injured.
Independence Day Explosion
The next time their crime fell into operational reports in 2008. They prepared for this explosion for at least a year. For this purpose, they specially came to Minsk. We studied the area around the stela "Minsk - Hero City", where President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko was supposed to speak on Independence Day.
This time they placed an explosive device in two two-liter packs from under the juice. Dmitry Konovalov, whose biography was strongly associated with a passion for chemistry, assembled the bomb so that there were no casualties, but there were a large number of wounded.
From the first explosion 54 people were injured. Three were in serious condition. The second explosive device for unknown reasons did not work.
The attack in the Minsk metro
Konovalov and Kovalev committed their largest terrorist attack in the Belarusian metro.
On April 11, 2011, the main character of this article got out of the car at the Kupalovskaya station. In his hands was a heavy bag weighing about 20 kilograms. It contained a bomb in two large 20-liter water bottles.
He installed an explosive device at the Oktyabrskaya station. At the same time, he moved to a safe distance and waited for a train to come and a large number of people would be on the platform. When this happened, at 17.55 he made an explosion. After that, he watched for a while. And then he left the metro along with the flow of people through the Kupalovskaya station.
As a result of the explosion, 15 people were killed, 203 were injured.
Detention and trial
The young man was not married. The closest people in his life were parents. The family of Dmitry Konovalov was amazed at what happened, no one imagined what the guy was doing.
Immediately after the attack, employees of the Belarusian KGB seized video surveillance cameras. So they managed to find out that the suspected citizen lives near the Frunzenskaya metro station. First, he was monitored, and then special forces soldiers detained him.
When the security forces came to the apartment, which Konovalov rented with Kovalev and his girlfriend Yana Pochitskaya, Dmitry immediately understood everything and said: “I got caught,” he hid in the bathroom.
Konovalov was charged under five articles of the Criminal Code. This is hooliganism, attempted crime, terrorism, illegal trafficking and manufacture of explosives, deliberate destruction of property. The defendant pleaded guilty on all counts.
The prosecutor's office requested the death penalty for Konovalov and Kovalev. In November 2011, both were sentenced to death. Konovalov refused to ask for pardon, and Kovalev wrote the corresponding petition. True, President Alexander Lukashenko rejected him anyway.
In March 2012, the sentence was carried out. Both terrorists were shot.