Bomber of Pae Street sentenced

TALLINN- The Tallinn court has sentenced 70-year-old defendant Mart Ringmaa on charges of staging 11 explosions in the Estonian capital in which seven people lost their lives sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The Harju Country Court found Ringmaa's guilt to be proven only in two instances and acquitted him in nine cases of the indictment.

Public Prosecutor Margus Kurm had wanted Ringmaa to be jailed for life.

Kurm considered Ringmaa's guilt to be proven in all episodes of carrying out of explosions and making of explosive devices. The prosecutor said he was seeking a life sentence because the explosions represented the crime series that has claimed the biggest number of victims in Estonian history.

Ringmaa, in his last words, said that the evidence cited in the indictment does not allow the court to convict him. Ringmaa said he had made a confession of fraud, which he committed in submitting false data to the pension authority, but had never manufactured or handled an explosive device.

According to the indictment, Ringmaa staged 11 explosions over the years 1998-2005, in which seven people were killed and six injured. The explosions caused damage worth more than seven million kroons, whereas two more blasts allegedly plotted by Ringmaa never took place because the bombs failed to detonate.

Most of the victims of the explosions that Ringmaa was accused of staging were on Pae Street in the eastern Tallinn neighborhood of Lasnamae were random people who had gone to examine a booby-trap bomb disguised by the bomber as a bag or ordinary item.