Swiss court revisits case of alleged Belarusian regime operative

A 48-year-old Belarusian man accused of helping Lukashenko’s security apparatus abduct and kill opposition figures is due to appear before the St Gallen Cantonal Court on Tuesday. The hearing follows a 2023 acquittal that drew international attention and left Switzerland’s first enforced-disappearance prosecution unresolved.

The defendant, who is physically impaired following an accident, first described his alleged role during his asylum application in Switzerland in 2019. He said he had acted on behalf of President Alexander Lukashenko’s regime and had taken part in the murders of three opposition politicians in 1999. One of the alleged victims was Yuri Zakharenko, Belarus’s former interior minister.

The case has brought a Belarusian political crime into a Swiss courtroom and placed eastern Switzerland at the centre of a test of the country’s ability to prosecute grave abuses committed abroad. Around 30 journalists from Switzerland and other countries attended the first trial in Rorschach, together with human rights organisations.

The appeal was lodged by two daughters of opposition politicians who disappeared at the time and by Geneva-based Trial International. They are seeking convictions for multiple enforced disappearances. The St Gallen court will now examine the evidence and legal arguments again.

The alleged crimes date to 1999, when several prominent Belarusian opposition figures disappeared. Zakharenko, a former interior minister who had broken with Lukashenko, was among those named by the defendant in accounts given during his asylum proceedings and later repeated in public statements.

The defendant presented himself as a member of a Belarusian special forces unit. Prosecutors argued that he was part of a group responsible for making opposition figures “disappear” and that he supplied details about the operations that could have been known only to an insider.

In court, however, the man denied personally carrying out any murders. He acknowledged helping execute orders to abduct and shoot people, while maintaining that he had not killed anyone himself. He also apologised to the victims’ families.

The lower court viewed his testimony with deep caution. Judges noted that he had repeatedly contradicted himself during the asylum process, in questioning by the public prosecutor’s office and at trial. It was also established that Belarus had sentenced him to several years in prison for bribery during the 2000s. The court concluded that his accounts had not established the facts required for a conviction.

Switzerland added enforced disappearance to its Criminal Code in 2017, incorporating an offence based on a United Nations convention. The provision allows Swiss authorities to prosecute certain cases even when the alleged conduct occurred abroad.

That legal framework gives the St Gallen proceedings significance beyond the fate of one defendant. This is the first prosecution of its kind in Switzerland, according to the source material. The case tests how Swiss courts handle allegations that rely on events decades old, witnesses outside Switzerland and testimony from a person whose credibility has been sharply contested.

The complaint was filed by two daughters of opposition politicians who disappeared in Belarus and by Trial International, a Geneva-based NGO that pursues accountability for international crimes. Their legal team has appealed the lower court’s decision and is seeking convictions for multiple enforced disappearances.

The legal route also reflects Switzerland’s wider role in international justice. Swiss courts can become venues for victims and relatives when alleged crimes cannot be effectively investigated in the country where they occurred. The evidence must still meet the same demanding standards that apply in any criminal case. In 2023, Rorschach District Court found that threshold had not been reached.