St PETERSBURG, April 3. /TASS/.A thousand white roses, a concert against terror and a book of recollections will remind the residents and visitors of St. Petersburg on Tuesday about the terrorist bombing of the city’s metro that occurred exactly on this day a year ago.
A suicide bomber, whom detectives identified later as Akbarzhon Jalilov, a Kyrgyzstan-born Russian citizen, detonated an explosive device on a train between the Sennaya Ploshchad and Technologichesky Institut stations, which claimed 15 lives and wounded more than a hundred people.
The prompt reaction by police and law enforcement officials made it possible to avert a second explosion at Ploshchad Vosstaniya station that would have inflicted far more casualties.
About 20 individuals are facing criminal charges due to this terrorist attack.
On Tuesday, volunteers will hand out 1,000 white roses at the entrance of Techknologichesky Institut where an improvised memorial to the victims of the terrorist attack emerged on the day of the tragedy.
A Russian Orthodox remembrance service will be held at the Holy Trinity Cathedral on Izmailovsky Prospekt at 13:00 and after that city officials, as well as families and friends of the deceased will take part in a flower-laying ceremony at the site of the tragedy.
Also on Tuesday, the St. Petersburg subway system is expected to present a Memory Book containing fifteen stories about those, who died in the terror bombing, and comments left by people at the improvised memorial at Tekhnologichesky Institut.
At 19:00 hours, a remembrance concert will take place at the Oktyabrsky Grand Concert Hall, entitled ‘Music against Terror’.
Over the past year since the terrorist attack, the first of its kind in the St. Petersburg metro, federal authorities have paid out almost 35 million rubles [about $ 612,000] to support the families of the dead and the survivors. The city government has earmarked almost 40 million rubles [$700,000], while the St. Petersburg metro system set aside 53 million rubles [$927,000] for the terror victims.
In addition to it, the Prervanny Polyot regional public association raised 25 million rubles [$437,000] in donations to assist the victims’ families and survivors.
Vladimir Garyugin, head of the St. Petersburg subway system, told a local TV channel on Monday the management of the city’s rapid transit system had launched a program to set up security technology throughout the transit network. For instance, smart CCTV and surveillance systems have been installed on half of the stations and another nine stations will be added to the list soon, he said.
Garyugin also pointed to a change in the customers’ perception of security checks held in the metro system regularly, emphasizing people had become more tolerant towards them. These checks helped expose more than 150,000 suspicious items in customers’ baggage last year alone.