Yuri Garavsky has confessed to being involved in the kidnapping of political opponents of Belarus' leader in 1999. They were later murdered. He now is on trial in Switzerland and the verdict is expected on Thursday.
Yuri Harauski, a former member of a military unit known as SOBR, exited a tinted-window van wearing a hood as he entered the courthouse in the northern city of St. Gallen in Switzerland.
A landmark trial opens Tuesday in Switzerland of a former member of an elite Belarusian police unit allegedly behind the disappearances of political opponents of President Alexander Lukashenko nearly a quarter century ago.Yury Garavsky, 44, will appear in court in the northeastern Swiss canton of St. Gallen, accused of having participated in the enforced disappearances in 1999 of three major political opponents of Lukashenko.
A former member of Belarusian President Aleksander Lukashenko’s special security forces was going on trial Tuesday in Switzerland over the enforced disappearances of political opponents in the late 1990s — seen as a landmark case of international justice. Yuri Harauski, a former member of a military unit known as SOBR, exited a tinted-window van wearing a hood as he entered the courthouse in the northern city of St. Gallen. Activists have said the two-day trial marks a pivotal moment in international justice that could trigger prosecutions abroad of other Belarusian officials — including Lukashenko.