Swiss Court Convicts Belarus Officer Over 1999 Disappearance

A Swiss court on Monday convicted a former Belarusian security officer over the enforced disappearance of a businessman in Belarus in 1999. It was the first conviction anywhere of a member of Belarus's security forces, according to the rights groups that brought the case.

The Cantonal Court of St. Gallen found Yuri Harauski guilty over the disappearance of Anatoly Krasouski, a businessman who supported the Belarusian opposition. Harauski, a former member of the Special Rapid Response Unit known as SOBR, was given a two-year suspended prison sentence.

The sentence was reduced because of his cooperation, his comprehensive confession and a public apology to the victims, the court said, according to TRIAL International, one of the groups behind the case.

“I feel relieved to have received the guilty verdict,” Valeriya Krasouskaya, Krasouski's daughter, said. “After 27 years, at least one of the numerous persons involved in the abduction and murder of my father is officially recognised guilty.”

A confession from 2019

The case began with Harauski himself. In a 2019 interview with Deutsche Welle, he said he had taken part in the abductions of three men in 1999. He said his unit's commander, Dzmitry Pavlichenko, shot the men, and that Krasouski and another victim were buried at an Interior Ministry training ground.

Those claims have not been tested in a Belarusian court. No bodies have been recovered, and Belarus has never prosecuted anyone over the disappearances.

Harauski was living in Switzerland and seeking asylum there when TRIAL International, the International Federation for Human Rights and the Human Rights Center Viasna filed a criminal complaint in 2021, together with relatives of two of the disappeared men. The complaint was possible under universal jurisdiction, which lets Swiss courts try certain grave crimes even when they were committed abroad.

A Swiss court acquitted Harauski in 2023, ruling that his role had not been legally proven because he had made contradictory statements over time. The daughters of two of the victims appealed. An appeal trial was held on Sept. 22, and Monday's ruling overturned that acquittal in part.

One conviction, two acquittals left standing

The court convicted Harauski over Krasouski, who disappeared with Viktar Hanchar on Sept. 16, 1999, after the two men visited a sauna in Minsk. Hanchar had headed the country's Central Election Commission before joining the opposition.

The court left in place Harauski's acquittal over the disappearances of Hanchar and of former Interior Minister Yuri Zakharenka, who vanished in Minsk in May 1999. In Zakharenka's case, Reuters reported, the court said Harauski's intent and knowledge of the violent abduction and killing could not be established.

“Even if it's a partial victory, it's the first conviction anywhere in the world of a member of the Belarusian security forces,” Philip Grant, the founder of TRIAL International, said.

The groups behind the case called the verdict a precedent. They said it showed that accountability for crimes committed under President Alexander Lukashenko was achievable, and that it could help wider efforts to examine who ordered the disappearances.

For the families, the ruling answered one question and left others open. The men disappeared 27 years ago. Monday's verdict established, in a court, that one of them was taken by a state security unit. It did not recover a body, and it did not name the people who gave the orders.