The Smolensk Region investigating bodies of the Russia’s Investigative Committee have finished investigating a criminal case against a 31-year-old citizen of the Republic of Belarus. He is charged with crimes under article 105 of the RF Criminal Code (murder of two people), article 162 (banditry), article 166 (hijack of a car), article 167 (intentional damage of another’s property), article 313 (escape from detention).

According to investigators the accused, who had been earlier sentenced by court in Belarus of an intended killing out of hooliganism to 15 years in an intensified security penitentiary, was released on parole in October 2011, however he committed a number of intentional crimes in Smolensk Region on 10-11 September 2012.

In the summer 2012, the man learned that an acquaintance of his, who was engaged in illegal exchange of Belorussian money to foreign currency, had 20 thousand US dollars and decided to steal it. For this purpose he involved his friend who also had previous police records. The men developed a plan of the crime, according to which the accused was to his acquaintance a job in Moscow as a head of a construction brigade and talk him into a trip to Moscow in his car and with the money.

At night of 10 September 2012, the men in the victim’s Mercedes-Benz S-180 set off from Mogilyov to Moscow. At 246^th km of motorway Moscow-Minsk near the village of Chornoye, Vyazemsky district, seeing that there were no cars on the road, the perpetrators asked the man to pull up the car, and left for a while. When they came back one of them threw his belt on the around the man’s neck and tried to strangle him. The man resisted and managed to get out of the car. After that the two culprits ran him down and strangled in a ditch. Then they stole his money – 20 thousand 400 US dollars and 20 thousand rubles – and fled the scene in the victim’s car. To conceal the crime and to make the fingerprinting impossible the culprits cut off the victim’s hands and dragged the body to the woods. On their way back to Belarus the accused decided not to share the money with his accomplice and when they made a stop at the cemetery in the village of Barsuli, Roslavlsky district, to burn down the clothes they were wearing when committing the crime, he stabbed his accomplice in cold blood. While trying to get away, the accused lost control of the car and went down to the ditch near the village of Usvyatye, Dorogobuzhsky district and could not get out. Using a gas lighter he set a fire to the dashboard of the car and it burned down.

On 22 September 2012, the accused was apprehended and in two days was placed in custody. On 1 October 2012, he broke from the detention center of Dorogobuzhsky municipality department of the Russian Interior Ministry, but in a few hours was caught in the woods.

Investigators have gathered enough evidence, therefore, the criminal case with the approved indictment has been forwarded to court to be tried on the merits.