A former fighter of the Belarusian special forces confirmed the killing of oppositionists

Former fighter of the Belarusian Combined Rapid Response Unit (SOBR) Yury Garavsky testified in a Swiss court, in which he told about the work of the so-called “death squad” – a special unit that was engaged in the abduction and murder of critics of the Alexander Lukashenko regime.

The Russian service of the BBC notes that these statements became the first official confirmation of the involvement of the Belarusian security forces in the crimes.

According to Haravsky’s account, in 1999 he personally detained two well-known Belarusian oppositionists, Viktor Honchar and Yuri Zakharenko, as well as businessman Anatoly Krasovsky. All three subsequently disappeared.

The investigation into their disappearance, conducted by the Belarusian authorities, yielded no results. Haravskyi confirmed what the Belarusian oppositionists had been saying for more than twenty years: all three were killed. In court, the former commando named the person who personally shot Honchar, Zakharenko and Krasovsky with a pistol: this is SOBR commander Dmitry Pavlychenko. Haravsky himself, according to his words, participated only in the detention of oppositionists, and also helped to take them out of Minsk, where, in the end, they were killed.

• Yuri Garavsky fled to Europe from Belarus in 2019, after which he gave an interview to the German publication Deutsche Welle, in which he talked about his involvement in the murders of Belarusian oppositionists. Two years later, human rights activists from the Minsk “Vesna” center, together with their European colleagues from the organizations FIDH and Trial International, achieved the initiation of a criminal case against a former SOBR fighter – precisely on the basis of his interview. Haravsky’s trial on charges of “forced disappearance” of three people is being held in St. Gallen, Switzerland. The prosecutor has already demanded a three-year prison sentence for the defendant – taking into account his cooperation with the investigation. The sentence will be announced next week.
• Two Belarusian oppositionists who publicly criticized the head of the country, Alexander Lukashenko, disappeared in Minsk in 1999. Yury Zakharenko was the first Minister of Internal Affairs of independent Belarus, and joined the opposition immediately after his resignation. He tried to create an organization of security forces dissatisfied with the activities of the president. In the early 1990s, Viktor Gonchar started in Lukashenko’s team, was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet, and also headed the CEC. Then he also joined the opposition. On September 16, 1999, Gonchar was kidnapped from the bath together with his friend, businessman Anatoly Krasovsky.
• The SOBR commander Dmitry Pavlychenko, against whom Yury Garavsky testified, resigned at the beginning of the “zeroes”, however, in 2020, during the mass protests against the Lukashenko regime, he was noticed by the commanding unit of the riot police when dispersing the demonstrators.