ST. PETERSBURG – St. Petersburg’s Kalininsky District Court has sanctioned two-month arrest of Dmitry Lukyanenko, who was detained in the case of an explosion at a Perekryostok supermarket on Saturday, the united press service for the city’s courts said on Dec.31.
Lukyanenko has been arrested until Feb.28, it said.
“The defendant has not objected to his arrest. He pleaded guilty to charged crimes. He has not been registered at a psychoneurological hospital. He has no illnesses preventing his placement into custody,” the court said.
The court’s hearing was held in camera, without participation of the media.
On Wednesday evening, an improvised explosive device filled with damaging agents went off in the Perekryostok supermarket on Kondratyevsky Avenue in St. Petersburg. A total of 18 people were injured in the explosion. According to the Russian Investigative Committee, the bomb was equivalent to 200 grams of TNT.
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Saturday that a suspect behind the St. Petersburg explosion had been detained. A source told Interfax that the suspect was a 35-year-old local resident, Dmitry Lukyanenko, a member of the nationalist occultist movement New Age and a drug user.
On Sunday, the Russian Investigative Committee’s Main Investigative Directorate for St. Petersburg has brought charges of committing a terror attack in one of the city’s supermarkets against the man previously detained on suspicion of it
It was established following investigative activities and operative and search measures that the defendant had deliberately manufactured and planted an improvised explosive device, Russian Investigative Committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko told Interfax. He also hid two flash drives containing information about reasons for the act he had committed and photographs of the explosive device not far from the explosion site.
Investigative activities and forensic studies, including a genetic one, prove the defendant’s involvement in manufacturing the explosive device and adding information to the flash drives.
During questioning, he also gave testimony proving his involvement in organizing and committing the crime. The motive for the crime was hatred for organizers and adherents of psychological trainings he had previously attended, the defendant said.
Given the gravity of the committed crime, as well as the fact that the defendant has been staying in a psychoneurological hospital since he was 19, and in accordance with requirements of the criminal procedure legislation, a forensic psychiatric evaluation of him will be ordered to determine his mental condition. The evaluation envisages analyzing the mental state not only at the time the crime was committed, but the proceeding period, which will make it possible to establish the facts and events that had affected the defendant’s health.
