Former Belarusian Soldier Acquitted in 1999 Disappearance Case

A court in St. Gallen, Switzerland, acquitted former Belarusian soldier Yuri Harauski on charges of involvement in the 1999 “disappearances” of three of President Alexander Lukashenko’s political opponents. (Flickr) 

Yuri Harauski, a former Belarusian soldier, was acquitted on September 28, 2023 on an enforced disappearance charge relating to his role in the 1999 vanishing of Anatoly Krasovsky, Yuri Zakharenko, and Viktor Gonchar, all of whom strongly opposed Belarus’s current President, Aleksandr Lukashenko. The absence of these three men likely helped clear the way for Lukashenko to consolidate power, facilitating his present near-totalitarian grip on the country.  

The Belarusian government’s investigation of these disappearances ended in 2003 without a resolution. An investigator from the Council of Europe later concluded that senior officials may have been involved in the disappearances and that Belarusian authorities had covered them up. 

In 2018, Harauski began the process of applying for asylum in Switzerland, claiming that a car accident in which he was involved was an assassination attempt. The following year, Harauski reached out to a number of journalists, confessing he had played a role in the disappearances. In past media statements, Mr. Harauski admitted to his involvement in an eight-person hit squad which kidnapped and murdered Krasovsky, Zakharenko, and Gonchar nearly 25 years ago. Harauski maintains that he neither ordered nor carried out any of the murders. 

Prosecutors sought a three-year prison sentence, with two of the years suspended, for Harauski. However, at the two-day trial’s conclusion, a panel of three Swiss district-court judges ruled it was not possible for Harauski’s role in the disappearances to be “considered legally proven.” The judges went on to suggest Mr. Harauski may have been incentivized to overstate his role in the 1999 disappearance case in order to support his asylum claim. 

The case against Harauski had been led by three human rights advocacy groups: TRIAL International, the International Federation of Human Rights, and Viasna. Following the verdict, TRIAL International stated its continued desire to “support the victims in their quest for justice.” Anatoly Krasovsky’s daughter described the ruling as “very absurd, very strange.”

Harauski’s acquittal disappointed many in civil society. Before the verdict, activists had been hopeful the case could lead to the prosecution of additional Belarusian officials, perhaps even Lukashenko. In concert with Lukashenko’s support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this case’s failure to set a precedent of prosecution frustrates many activists’ hopes of institutional reform.