2 Who Alleged Belarus Death Squad Missing

Two former state prosecutors who investigated the suspected murders of opposition figures in the former Soviet republic of Belarus went missing last week after accusing authoritarian President Alexander G. Lukashenko of sponsoring a death squad to “disappear” his enemies.

The prosecutors--Dmitry Petrushkevich and Oleg Sluchek--are believed to have fled the country after sending information on the alleged death squad to journalists.

The Belarussian human rights group Legal Assistance said Tuesday that the pair had been granted refugee status in the United States, but American diplomats in Minsk, the capital, and in Washington declined to comment.

“Without commenting on individuals, we’re quite aware of the situation,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington. “We think these revelations are important. They give an urgency to clearing up this entire matter.”

Lukashenko--called “Little Father” by his supporters and “Europe’s last dictator” by his opponents--has been accused by the U.S. government and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe of rigging elections and repressing the political opposition.

Disappearances of Prominent Critics

In little more than two years, four of the Belarussian president’s former allies who became prominent critics have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Opponents accuse Lukashenko of trying to destroy any potential opposition in advance of presidential elections scheduled for Sept. 9.

Opposition parties consider the elections illegal. In 1996, Lukashenko held a national referendum of questionable legality that extended his term of office, disbanded parliament and formed a rubber-stamp legislature. International monitors never recognized the elections. Even in neighboring Russia, a country not renowned for its commitment to the democratic process, Lukashenko’s moves raised eyebrows.

The former prosecutors’ accusations come as the political atmosphere in Belarus is heating up ahead of the presidential campaign. On Tuesday, the offices of opposition newspaper Nasha Svoboda were searched for “anti-Lukashenko materials,” according to Russia’s Interfax news agency. And on Friday, Belarus’ ambassador to Latvia was recalled from his post after announcing his plans to run for president.

The ambassador, Mikhail Marinich, said he had expected the recall after announcing his candidacy.

“The country is going nowhere,” he said. “It is painful and disappointing when your country is called the last totalitarian regime in Europe. We should not be outcasts in the world.”

Death Squad Allegedly Carried Out 30 Murders

But the two prosecutors have added the most fuel to the fire. In their statements, they said there were about 10 people on the alleged death squad, some of them convicted criminals or organized crime figures. The group carried out about 30 murders, was under the command of the Interior Ministry and answered to the secretary of the nation’s Security Council, whose members are among Lukashenko’s closest advisors, the pair said.

“The group was ordered to develop a method of kidnapping, murder and then disposing of the corpse,” Sluchek said in his statement. “The method had to exclude any possibility that the corpse could be found. In effect, their job was to figure out how to commit a ‘perfect murder,’ since when there is no corpse, there is no crime.”

Sluchek and Petrushkevich said they came by their information in the course of investigating the disappearance of a Russian TV cameraman, Dmitry Zavadsky, who disappeared in July within minutes of arriving at the Minsk airport. He had formerly served as Lukashenko’s cameraman before going to work for the Russian channel ORT, which ran afoul of the president.

“The approximate location of his body was ascertained” during the investigation, Petrushkevich wrote, but officials blocked a request for equipment needed for an exhumation. “I believe it was Lukashenko himself who recognized that he didn’t really want Zavadsky’s body to be found.”

Sluchek said Zavadsky may have been killed in part because he had worked for ORT in the separatist Russian republic of Chechnya, where he became acquainted with Valery Ignatovich, a member of the death squad who served for a while on an elite police force. The prosecutors said Ignatovich is believed to have decided to settle personal scores with Zavadsky, who had identified him in TV footage as being involved in kidnappings and killings in Chechnya.

Belarussian officials categorically deny the existence of a death squad.

“This is a scandal about nothing,” said Fyodor Kotov, spokesman for the Belarussian KGB. “Such a group never existed.”

But at a news conference, a spokesman for the Belarussian general prosecutor’s office partially confirmed the prosecutors’ story. Spokesman Alexei Taranov said the two men had in fact worked on the Zavadsky case before they left their posts under unclear circumstances.

He also confirmed that Ignatovich had served in the elite police force and had fought in Chechnya. Ignatovich is in prison facing kidnapping charges in connection with the Zavadsky case, Taranov said.

Taranov warned that the two prosecutors “may be called to account under the criminal code for revealing secrets of an ongoing investigation and abusing their positions.”

The two men also alleged that the death squad was involved in the disappearance of Lukashenko political rivals in 1999 and last year, but they provided less evidence to back those allegations because their focus was on Zavadsky’s case.

Some observers said the accusations about the alleged death squad and the Zavadsky case could serve as a catalyst for the opposition in Belarus. They compared the situation to that in Ukraine, where charges that President Leonid D. Kuchma was involved in the slaying of a journalist led to street protests this year that threatened to topple his regime. The protests have since quieted and, at least for now, Kuchma seems secure in his post.

Little Chance of Challenging Leader

But independent political analyst Vadim Kaznacheyev in Minsk said Belarus’ opposition has little chance of mounting a serious challenge to Lukashenko because the opposition’s two most effective leaders--former presidential advisor Viktor Gonchar and former Interior Minister Yuri Zakharenko--are among the missing.

“Everyone wants to know what happened to the ‘disappeared,’ ” Kaznacheyev said. “It seems Gonchar and Zakharenko could have posed a real alternative to Lukashenko. Now there are no real competitors left.”

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Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington and special correspondent Tatiana Shchebet in Minsk contributed to this report.