A man who claims to have served in an elite Belarusian police unit says he helped murder key opposition figures 20 years ago, leading to calls Tuesday for President Alexander Lukashenko to be investigated. Yury Garavsky gave sensational testimony to German broadcaster Deutsche We
A man who claims to have served in an elite Belarusian police unit says he helped murder key opposition figures 20 years ago, leading to calls Tuesday for President Alexander Lukashenko to be investigated.
Yury Garavsky gave sensational testimony to German broadcaster Deutsche Welle about his part in the 1999 killings of three of Lukashenko’s political opponents, including a former interior minister. At the time, he said, he was working for the interior ministry’s SOBR special forces team.
In an interview published Monday, Garavsky said he was personally present during the executions of former interior minister Yury Zakharenko, Viktor Gonchar and Anatoly Krasovsky. Zakharenko vanished in May 1999. Then in September, former lawmaker Gonchar and his friend, businessman Krasovsky were abducted.
Garavsky, who has fled Belarus to seek asylum abroad, identified his superior, SOBR chief Dmitry Pavlichenko, as the man who shot the victims in the chest. Pavlichenko has dismissed the accusations.
