MOSCOW, August 22 (RIA Novosti) - A man faces trial in Russia's Tyumen Region, accused of planting several bombs in a residential building and attempting to murder his ex-wife’s sister, the local Investigative Committee said Thursday.
According to investigators, the 36-year-old accused, who has not been named, planted explosive-filled cigarette packs in mail boxes in a residential building in the Siberian city of Tobolsk last June. As a result, a 62-year-old woman and a 50-year-old man had their hands blown off and also suffered multiple burns.
The accused said he planted the devices in revenge for an acquintance initiating a law suit against him, after the accused beat him up.
Investigators also claim that in 2005 the alleged bomber attempted to kill his ex-wife’s sister by sending her a cake stuffed with explosives. An accomplice paid two teenagers to deliver the cake, which he later intended to set off by remote control.
“The woman, however, refused to take the cake. Having realized that other people in the residential building might be harmed, the accomplice broke the remote control, threw it in a trash bin and later told the accused that the transmitter malfunctioned,” investigators said in a statement.
Investigators say they arrested the accused at his summer cottage in June 2012, where they discovered bomb-making equipment including aluminum powder and ammonium nitrate and empty cigarette packs.
The accused was dubbed the “Tyumen Unabomber” by local media, in reference to convicted US terrorist Theodore Kaczynsky, who planted or mailed numerous home-made explosive devices in the 1990s, killing three people and wounding 23.
