A.BASTUNETS: "THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC PROSECUTOR PAYS NO ATTENTION TO THE COURTS DECISION TO DECLARE ZAVADSKI DEAD..."

31.05.2006.

On May 30 the Attorney General Piotr Miklashevich claimed they were "still looking for Dzmitry Zavadski". BAJ deputy chairperson Andrej Bastunets stressed that the Office of Public Prosecutor paid no attention to the court's decision to declare Zavadski dead and was not going to start a criminal case.
"It is still unclear were Zavadski is but we continue the search.", - claimed P. Miklashevich on May 30.
A. Bastunets's comment: "The Attorney General seems to deliberately stress the fact that "they are looking for Zavadski" (as if he was alive). It seems that the Office of Public Prosecutor ignores the fact that he might have been murdered".
The journalist's wife Sviatlana Zavadskaja says many journalists phoned her after P. Miklashevich's statement because they thought that the investigation had been restarted. Nevertheless, Zavadski's relatives were not informed about anything of the kind.
Dzmitry Zavadzki, an "ORT" TV Channel cameraman disappeared on July 7, 2000. He went to the "Minsk-2" airport to meet his colleague Paval Sharamiet. However, Sharamiet found D. Zavadzki's empty car only. On 16 July 2002, the Belarus Supreme Court confirmed a life sentence against Valery Ignatovich, former head of special units at the interior ministry and a subordinate, Maxim Malik, for abduction and disappearance of the young cameraman and for the murder of five other people.
According to the official version of events, Ignatovich decided to seek revenge against Zavadski because he felt himself the target of the journalist's remarks, when he said in an interview in 2000 with the daily Belorusskaya Delovaya Gazeta, that he had met Belarus nationals fighting alongside separatists in Chechnya. The trial did not allow the exact circumstances of the journalist's kidnapping to come out nor did it identify those who ordered it. Last time the case was closed on march 31, 2006.
The BAJ Press Service

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