Cameraman Zavadsky’s Disappearance Case Suspended :: Charter'97 :: News

Decision to halt investigation into the disappearance of journalist Dmitry Zavadsky was passed by the head of investigation group Ivan Branchel, who’s been placed in charge of the case ever since the ORT cameraman’s vanishing in July 2000. The notification, signed by Ivan Branchel, which has been recently received by Zavadsky’s wife Svetlana, mentions the following root-cause of that: “in connection with the failure to locate the missing individual”.

Svetlana Zavadskaya tends to think that she’s being deceived. She recalls how after last year’s trial over the gang of Ignatovich, her husband’s episode had been singled out into a separate case, which was then temporarily halted. After her complaints to the procuracy, the investigation was resumed only to last for two months. Why are they acting so? Svetlana Zavadskaya has her own version of that:

“The plaintiff has every right to file applications and demand interrogation of suspected and implicated persons. We composed a few such petitions but received their refusal. Advocates assume that their refusal was unmotivated and wrong. However, we kept on insisting on that. If we continue bombarding them with complaints, they’ll gather a heap of them. So it is more convenient to them to shut the case down now and for all,” – Radio Svaboda quotes Svetlana Zavadskaya as saying in her interview.

In the beginning of the year they also halted criminal lawsuits into the disappearance of Viktor Gonchar, Anatoly Krasovsky and Yuri Zakharenko. The city procuracy referred to the same reasons, namely that the missing hasn’t been found, while the resource of investigative actions was exhausted. Wives of Gonchar and Krasovsky complained over that illicit move to the national procuracy, but to no avail.

Procuracy officials also keep silent as concerns Zinaida Gonchar and Irina Krasovskaya’s claims to resend their husbands’ cases to KGB investigation. Now Svetlana Zavadskaya and her lawyer Sergei Tsurko are drafting a complaint over the ruling of investigator Ivan Branchel and also consider the possibility to pass over the case to KGB.