(RSF/IFEX) – On 16 July 2002, the Belarusian Supreme Court confirmed the life sentence of Valery Ignatovich, former head of the Interior Ministry’s special police force, and one of his subordinates for their part in the kidnapping and disappearance of journalist Dmitri Zavadski and five other murders. RSF and the Damocles Network noted that the […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 16 July 2002, the Belarusian Supreme Court confirmed the life sentence of Valery Ignatovich, former head of the Interior Ministry’s special police force, and one of his subordinates for their part in the kidnapping and disappearance of journalist Dmitri Zavadski and five other murders.
RSF and the Damocles Network noted that the body of Zavadski, who disappeared in Minsk on 7 July 2000, has still not been found and that serious questions remained unanswered in the case. The Zavadski family’s lawyer, Sergei Tsurko, called the verdict “illegal” and based on “conflicting confessions and thin evidence.”
RSF and the Damocles Network called for the launch of a new investigation to establish who is responsible for the journalist’s disappearance and probable murder, and said they would support all efforts by his family to find out the truth. The two organisations repeated their demand for an independent inquiry and the Council of Europe’s intervention in the case.
Zavadski was President Alexander Lukashenko’s personal cameraman until 1996, when he resigned from the government-controlled television station without the blessing of the authorities and joined the Russian station ORT. He was imprisoned for two months with an ORT colleague in 1997 after they reported on security gaps along Belarus’s border with Lithuania (see IFEX alerts of 23 April 1998, 15 December, 9 September, 6 August and 28 July 1997).
In 2000, Zavadski revealed that Ignatovich, who had left the Interior Ministry Police, was working with independence fighters in Chechnya. Ignatovich was convicted on 14 March 2002 of murdering five people and of being responsible for the journalist’s disappearance. The Belarus authorities said he killed Zavadski allegedly because the journalist had reported his presence in Chechnya.
Despite the plausibility of the suspected killer’s motive, many questions remain. A blanket of silence has fallen over the case since September 2000, when Vladimir Naumov, who set up the Interior Ministry’s Almaz Special Police, which guards the president, was named interior minister.
The Minsk court curiously made no effort to look for the journalist’s body or establish the circumstances surrounding his kidnapping and probable murder. No journalist has been able to meet with those involved in the case or attend the court hearings. The Zavadski family were only summoned from time to time to give evidence in court.
In a statement on 11 June 2001, two former Belarusian prosecution officials who had fled abroad – including Dmitri Petrushkevic, who was in charge of the Zavadski case – accused the general prosecutor, Viktor Shayman, and the deputy head of the presidential office, Yuri Sivakov, of setting up a “death squad” in 1996, while they were secretary of the National Security Council and minister of the interior, respectively. They said the death squad was first told to eliminate underworld figures and later received more “political” missions. These accusations have never been investigated.
