After the St. Petersburg cafe explosion that killed a prominent Russian blogger on Sunday, Russia’s interior ministry added 26-year-old Daria Trepova to a wanted list — with her arrest announced shortly after by the Investigative Committee of Russia.
Russian state media reports suggest that the blogger, Vladlen Tatarsky, may have been killed by a device hidden in a figurine presented to him by a woman before the blast. No evidence has yet been presented about who carried out the bombing.
The ministry then released a video of the suspect in custody, identified by Russian authorities as Trepova. In the video, a male voice asks the woman if she understands why she has been detained. She replies in the affirmative, and said she was detained for being at the scene of Tatarsky’s murder.
A male interrogator then asks Trepova what she did at the cafe. She replies that she brought the figurine, but declined to answer who gave it to her.
The video was selectively released by the Russian authorities and it’s unclear if she was speaking under duress.
Confessions in Russia: Human-rights advocates and international observers say Russian police routinely use torture and ill treatment to extract confessions, and Russia’s security service uses coercion and entrapment to recruit informants among Russia’s opposition groups.
Trepova’s husband, Dmitry Rylov, told an independent Russian publication that he is convinced his wife was framed.
“She was really just set up and used,” Rylov was quoted as saying by The Insider.
