Elderly man suspected of bomb attacks dies in hospital
The case of the pensioner arrested on suspicion of causing bomb attacks across the country came to a premature end on Sunday when he died in hospital. The 68-year-old Prague man, named only as Vladimir S, apparently died of wounds inflicted after he tried to kill himself during his arrest in late December.
Police had breathed a collective sigh of relief on December 29th when the elderly man was arrested in the town of Teplice nad Metuji. He was caught as he was trying to lay explosives at a monument to Czech-German friendship, and stabbed himself repeatedly in the neck. Police chief Jiri Kolar:
"He shouted that he'd never give himself up alive, and stabbed himself several times in the neck, causing serious injuries. He was then taken to hospital."
The man is suspected of carrying out 18 bomb attacks over the last five years. Using DNA matching, police have connected him to 15 of them. The first target was Prague's Vysocany Hospital, in 1999, when an explosion caused damage but no injuries. There followed a series of incidents, including a spate of bomb attacks on railway lines. No-one was killed or seriously injured, but the attacks caused panic as well as considerable inconvenience to the authorities.
The man died before detectives could question or charge him. The media are now speculating on a motive for the attacks. Interestingly, the man made a ransom demand in just one case, leading psychologists to believe he was motivated by a sense of anger and frustration at society.
He grew up in an orphanage and after the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 he attempted to emigrate. He was caught on the border and sent to prison for several years. In the 1980s he was imprisoned again for fraud and shortly after the 1989 fall of communism, he lost his job. One psychologist described him as a bitter, frustrated old man who had the feeling he'd failed to achieve anything in his life.
In recent years he was the cause of frequent conflicts with his neighbours in the Prague housing estate where he lived. They remember him spending a lot of time on the balcony sawing and welding what they presumed were iron bars, but were in fact pipes he was using to make explosive devices. Few could have realised that their unpleasant neighbour was in reality a dangerous psychopath with a passion for planting explosives.
