New prosecutor general will take no steps to probe high-profile disappearances :: Charter'97 :: News

A prominent human rights activist expressed certainty that Monday’s appointment of a new prosecutor general would not contribute to any progress in the stalled investigation into the 1999-2000 disappearances of Aleksandr Lukashenko’s opponents. “No green light will be given for the inquiry,” said Garri Pogonyailo, deputy chairman of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee.

The Belarusian leader on November 29 appointed Viktor Sheiman to head the Presidential Administration and Pyotr Miklashevich, formerly first deputy chairman of the Supreme Court, to replace Mr. Sheiman in the post of prosecutor general.

The disappearances would be probed only after the incumbent leadership is unseated, Mr. Pogonyailo stressed. “As long as it doesn’t happen, we will get no answer to the question about the fates of the missing persons irrespective of who is appointed prosecutor general,” he said.

Mr. Pogonyailo has provided legal services to the wife of prominent opposition politician Viktor Gonchar who went missing in 1999. The Gonchar case appears to be part of a string of high-profile disappearances that occurred in Belarus in 1999 and 2000. The other public figures who disappeared during that period were Yury Zakharenko, former minister of internal affairs turned opposition politician; businessman Anatoly Krasovsky; and Dmitry Zavadsky, a cameraman with Russia’s ORT television network.