| A leitmotif has appeared in the Belarusian election campaign The scandal surrounding the “death squads,” which broke out in Minsk a week ago at the instigation of former employees of the Belarusian prosecutor’s office Dmitry Petrushkevich and Oleg Sluchek, who are now hiding abroad, is growing. A criminal case may now be brought against them for disclosing information about the disappearance of ORT cameraman Dmitry Zavadsky. A few days ago, former prosecutors emailed photocopies of documents related to the Zavadsky case.
Messrs. Sluchek and Petrushkevich claim that the abduction of Dmitry Zavadsky, businessman Anatoly Krasovsky, former chief of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Yuri Zakharenko and opposition leader Viktor Gonchar was carried out by a group led by special forces major Dmitry Pavlyuchenko. According to their information, back in 1997, he headed a special unit for special assignments - supposedly for the physical elimination of criminal authorities. Over the course of two or three years, several leaders of the criminal world actually disappeared without a trace in Belarus. According to Petrushkevich and Sluchek, the scheme, tested on criminals, was later used to eliminate Lukashenko’s political opponents. “In total, the group committed more than 30 murders,” the letter says. - All instructions for carrying out operations came to Pavlyuchenko directly from Sivakov (former Minister of Internal Affairs - Ed. ). Sivakov received them from Sheiman. After Sivakov’s resignation, the group came under the full control of the new Minister of Internal Affairs, Naumov.”
After Zavadsky’s disappearance, the KGB and the prosecutor’s office began the investigation seriously. Last fall, Dmitry Pavlyuchenko was even detained by Alpha officers and placed in a KGB detention center, where he was interrogated several times; they say that the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Vladimir Naumov himself visited the detainee. According to rumors, during a search, certain videotapes were confiscated from Dmitry Pavlyuchenko; one of them contained a recording of the beating of an employee of the Ministry of Culture, Anatoly Grachev.
However, Pavlyuchenko was taken straight from his cell to a meeting of the president with the heads of law enforcement agencies. The special forces major allegedly said only one phrase: “I followed all your orders.” Immediately after the meeting, he was released by order of the head of state. And the next day, Lukashenko signed a package of orders on the resignation of heads of law enforcement agencies. Material evidence of Pavlyuchenko’s involvement in the disappearances of people was allegedly kept in the personal safe of the former chairman of the KGB of Belarus, Vladimir Matskevich, but after a meeting with the security forces, Matskevich was not even allowed to enter his own office.
Dmitry Pavlyuchenko and his former boss Yuri Sivakov naturally deny involvement in death squads. Dmitry Pavlyuchenko claims that the unit he heads was created specifically for operations in wooded and swampy areas, since, allegedly, the rest of the special forces are trained for operations in urban conditions. Pavlyuchenko is now in real danger. They say that the surviving criminal authorities have long been looking for an opportunity to deal with the commander of the “death squads,” but until recently they did not know who it was.
What is happening in Belarus is surprisingly reminiscent of the recent scandal in Ukraine surrounding the disappearance of journalist Georgy Gongadze, only in the place of Kuchma’s fugitive bodyguard Nikolai Melnichenko, who released kilometers of audio recordings, are two dissident prosecutors. Perhaps the organizers of the leak in the Zavadsky case are hoping for a repeat of the Ukrainian scenario. For Lukashenko, the scandal could have much more serious consequences than for Kuchma: after all, the presidential elections in Belarus are less than three months away. The organizers of the leak could indeed be KGB officers. It is known that after his resignation from the post of head of the KGB, Vladimir Matskevich was offered the post of Belarusian ambassador to Yugoslavia, and Lukashenko even signed a corresponding decree, but Matskevich refused. Now he lives in Minsk and actively communicates with colleagues from the Russian FSB and the teams of some presidential candidates in Belarus. Perhaps he will even join the headquarters of one of these candidates.
There is only one thing alarming about this whole story. The authorities themselves provoked a new round of publications on the topic of disappearances by announcing at the end of April the end of the investigation into the Zavadsky case. The trial should take place just before the presidential elections. Nothing prevented law enforcement agencies from prolonging the investigation into this case, at least until the elections were over. Then there would be no reason to talk about these disappearances. Now Lukashenko’s opponents are willing to use the topic of kidnapping in their speeches, and some are ready to make it a hit of their campaign. If we imagine that just before the elections at least one of the abducted people is found, the election campaign of many of Lukashenko’s rivals will fail miserably. Having found, for example, Dmitry Zavadsky, the Belarusian president in the eyes of the people will be cleared of any involvement in other disappearances. Yuri ANDREEV, Minsk |
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