A bomb exploded on 11 April on the metro in Belarusian capital Minsk, killing 11 people and wounding some 150. On 13 April the country's president, Alexander Lukashenko, announced that security services had responded to his call to hunt down the guilty quickly and had netted the culprits.
Not only had the suspects admitted to Monday's metro attack, he said, but they had also owned up to being behind two previous unsolved cases - an explosion at a rock concert in 2008 and another at a cafe in Vitebsk in 2005.
But what sent shivers down the spine of his opponents was Lukashenko's instruction to security forces to study the "statements of political actors" - an oblique reference that the 56-year-old president often uses to describe the political opposition.
Clearly hinting that a link could be established between the suspects under arrest and members of the opposition, Lukashenko said: "We are looking for accomplices and those who ordered (the bombing). Maybe these actors from the 'fifth column' will show their cards and point to the one who ordered (the attack)."
His words appeared to herald a fresh drive by Belarus's state security service - which has kept the old Soviet acronym of KGB - against opposition activists and dissenters.
"All the signs are there that the authorities will use the blast to tighten the screws," Alexander Milinkevich, an opposition leader who ran for president against Lukashenko in 2006, told Reuters in Minsk.
Suggesting that Lukashenko was seeking to divert attention from mounting problems at home, Milinkevich said: "One of the reasons [for blaming the opposition] are economic problems. Another reason is obviously growing discontent."
Coming on top of Belarus's severe financial woes and a drain on dollar reserves, and sanctions by the West because of his treatment of political opponents, the bomb blast made Lukashenko look oddly vulnerable.
Harassed opposition
The ranks of the opposition in what the Bush administration once described as "the last remaining dictatorship in Europe" have already been decimated by arrest and harassment.
When more than 15,000 people rallied in central Minsk last December against Lukashenko's re-election for a fourth term in power, riot police waded in and initially detained seven of the nine presidential candidates who ran against him (see 'Background').
Hundreds of demonstrators and dissident activists were detained on the night and in a later KGB sweep.
At least four presidential candidates are still awaiting trial on charges linked to the December 19 disorder which, in theory, could earn some of them up to 15 years in jail.
Another former presidential candidate has fled abroad after alleging KGB torture. Several well-known dissidents have also left the country.
"We should expect a few 'show trials'. I don't know who will be the Joan of Arc [but] we must be ready," Anatoly Lebedko, leader of the opposition United Civic Party, told Reuters in Minsk.
Lukashenko badly needed to announce a quick breakthrough in the bombing investigation, most analysts agree.
A huge drain on currency reserves caused by pre-election spending has depleted the national bank's coffers and endangered Lukashenko's election promises to raise the average wage and living standards.
Dollars drying up
As the dollars have dried up and fears of devaluation persist, panic buying of consumer goods has begun to take hold among the population.
The 19 December police crackdown triggered renewed sanctions against Lukashenko by the European Union and the United States in the shape of a travel ban on him and associates.
While he has in the past laughed such sanctions off, the new mood makes it difficult for Belarus to turn to the International Monetary Fund for financial help at a crucial period.
Isolation also increases - uncomfortably for him - his dependence on big neighbour Russia, Belarus's main provider of gas and oil.
(EurActiv with Reuters.)
