MINSK. June 9 (Interfax) - A suspected Islamist accused of a plot to blow up a police station in a town in Belarus has been charged with an attempted terrorist attack, the State Security Committee (KGB) said on Friday.
The suspect, who is resident in Belarus, was arrested by police on May 24 on the site in Zhlobin, Gomel region, of the attack he was allegedly planning. He was wearing a mask with an Arabic inscription and had with him containers with an inflammable mixture and an improvised bomb that had the power of 5 kilograms of TNT, according to reports.
"The results of immediate investigations and an interrogation confirmed the allegiance of the accused to ideas of radical Islamism. According to his statements, the main purpose of the terrorist act was to intimidate the population and take revenge on the police," the KGB said told Interfax on Friday.
Investigators suspect that "the illegal actions of the accused may have been a reaction to the closure by law enforcement of some channels of illegal migration from countries with terrorist activity to Europe and the arrests of persons who had been involved in organizing them," the KGB said.
"The search is continuing for contacts between that citizen and organized crime rings, including cross-border radical Islamist groups," it said.
The KGB cited the man as saying that "he made the improvised explosive device by himself, without anyone else's participation, on the basis of information he had obtained from radical websites."
"The improvised explosive device was filled with nails," the KGB said. "Currently, the device is being examined at the State Center for Forensic Science, and the accused is undergoing a psychiatric assessment," the KGB said.