Darya Trepova, 26, delivered bomb to Vladlen Tatarsky, which killed him on the spot when it exploded
Darya Trepova, 26, has been jailed for 27 years for delivering a bomb that exploded in the hands of a pro-war military blogger last year and killed him on the spot.
The Russian woman was convicted by a St Petersburg court of charges including terrorism in connection with the death of blogger Vladlen Tatarsky.
Tatarsky was killed by a bomb concealed inside a statuette in his likeness that Trepova had presented to him as a gift during a talk he was giving in a St Petersburg cafe.
Trepova said she had been set up, and had thought the statuette contained a listening device, not a bomb.
Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, had more than 560,000 followers on Telegram and was one of the country’s most influential military bloggers. More than 30 people were wounded in the blast.
Reuters reports she told the trial she was acting under orders from a man in Ukraine whom she knew as “Gestalt” (German for “Shape”), who had been sending her money and instructions for several months before the cafe bombing.
Trepova said she had gone along with Gestalt’s instructions because she assumed the purpose of eavesdropping on Tatarsky was to find out more of what he knew about the war, which she opposed.
“I feel great pain and shame that my gullibility and my naivety led to such catastrophic consequences. I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” she told the court earlier this week. “I feel especial pain and shame that a terrorist act was carried out by my own hands.”
Russia accused Ukraine immediately after the attack of organising the murder of Tatarsky. Senior Ukrainian officials have neither claimed responsibility nor denied involvement in Tatarsky’s death.
The defence said Trepova too was a victim because she could herself have been killed or wounded.
After the bomb went off, a friend of her husband called Dmitry Kasintsev let her stay at his apartment that night. She was arrested there the following day.
Kasintsev was sentenced on Thursday to one year and nine months for helping her to hide, despite testimony from Trepova that she had never met him before and he had nothing to do with the bomb.
Source: The Guardian
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