no one asks me for doing. i think. i need to stop or something will happen. to social networks have any social responsibility at all. the cleaners social media shadow industry starts to name on t.w. . minsk the capital of valorous a vigil is being held to remember politicians who disappeared from here without a trace 20 years ago. a key witness has come forward he tells us that as a soldier of a special unit he was involved in the abduction and murder of the opposition politicians were unable to recall we were acting on orders. we were given a verbal order that was given any of us had refused we would have been replaced and

the next man would have done it to the family. we are talking about a conspiracy. why don't you like about human rights and. here you have the right just there. with the thought with them dark when you was admitted to hospital 10 months ago he could only walk in paying. his right hip had been smashed to pieces in a car accident. yuri fled to a german speaking region in the alps which shall remain unnamed his application for

asylum is still pending then 41 years old yuri received a hip replacement at a hospital in his host country. he has been scarred for life not only by the accident which he thinks was an attempt on his life but also by an event that turned him into a criminal and destroyed his family. yes and you put it all to the shores like my family in 2008 hours after the attempt on my life yep when i realized that my wife and daughter was sacred to me and so i decided to get divorced by the way yet i was rules since then i have lived a life also that so the. hearing no longer felt safe in his home country because he wanted to speak out get the burden off his chest as he explains he alleges that his former comrades from the mint security unit were pursuing him. for months

i had information that they were either arrest me or imprisonment is. the label i didn't want to sit in jail or make a confession. or be accused of something i hadn't done you know as a kid the book. store being on them. eerie was involved in a crime that has shaken people in eastern europe to this day the old fire station in the heart of minsk this is where the former minister of the interior yuri's ecker enco parked his car on the evening of may 7th 1909. zachary and co was a key figure of the opposition as always he walked the last few meters to his home . and. the reconstruction of the crime is based on the account of the key witness yuri grab scheme 2 men follow saccharin co so he is unable to escape.

2 more men block his path ahead they are soldiers dressed in plain clothes they belong to the special unit. one of the men says they are policeman and if he needs to go with them. 20 years ago the political situation in minsk was dramatic the former minister of the interior zachary and co had changed sides and was now the head of the opposition tens of thousands of protestors were on the streets trying to prevent their country from becoming a dictatorship. with 2 controversial referenda bella ruse president lukashenko made a bid to gain total power and exclude parliament the people's representatives in parliament went on a hunger strike in vain. since

then look at shankar has been ruling almost singlehandedly deloris is seen as the last dictatorship in europe a police state in its purest form. previously as minister of the interior zak a raincoat had tried to bring the country more and more towards the west on a visit to bourne he signed an agreement on police cooperation with germany. it was not going to. use. this move led to a clash with the president whose rule became increasingly authoritarian the opposition rallied and military officers joined forces with them with the aim of ousting look at. all the only. dear friends sure. lack ravens are circling above our land.

that's why the national congress came together yesterday to protect the constitution against the dictatorship. back then our witness eurico robiskie was 18 years old during his military service he joined a special unit and was soon integrated into a newly founded intervention force called saba where he spent 5 years finally receiving a promotion. he keeps copies of important documents in the refugee home where he's staying and tells us that the originals are in a safe place and. this is my membership card for the special units veterans association. people are served in the fighting units of the ministry of internal advance get one of these i was deputy commander in the 1st group this is the card you get if you were in the sober. bella ruse has several special units made up of hardened soldiers who are loyal to

their president here they show what they're capable of in the men's football stadium images from 20 years ago. saw his mission was to tackle smugglers and the mafia but our witness says that wasn't their sole task sauber was also deployed to forcibly eliminate the opposition. this is here in this summary i made a note of who was involved in the elimination of zakhar enco on may the 7th and who was involved in eliminating gunshot on september the 16th. series a list of all the people who knew about it and who were involved as is. who all the orders were given verbal with the media just all of them there is no written evidence because of the over dia recordings no minutes reports or anything

like that with. all of. the corn sure it was probably on behalf of president luther shenk or lib i don't know i can't say. lin's not anymore it's. zachary and co does not put up a fight. in the car he tells his kidnappers please do it painlessly the car leaves minsk heading north. bellerose 1st became an independent state after the collapse of the soviet union since 991 minsk has been the capital of a nation with around 10000000 citizens. a

statue of lenin leader of the revolution and founder of the soviet union stands in front of the seat of government even today a very soviet style is much in evidence a corner building on independence straight houses the ministry of internal affairs once the work place of year is occurring next door the headquarters of the intelligence service the k.g.b. back then as today a field center of power or lead vulture it has suffered a great deal of persecution and suppression by the state the civil rights activist and lawyer represents the secular anchor family in minsk there were more here we are in germany at the home of soccer and those wife this is his eldest daughter that's me in the middle and the writers are correct his wife they live in germany as political refugees. there is an atmosphere of fear in our country if you express your opinions and you

can end up in jail or be forced into corrective therapy that soviet system still exists in our country today. in september 999. and businessmen. were kidnapped. and members of the opposition to the president the witness tells us the. thought that this is the military base invaded. by. this this is where we killed them was a sort of the dance of the road after about 200 meters it goes about 20 meters into the forest this. this is where we killed concha and christophe skis to. the border and here about 50 meters away a grave was done because this. was this would spoil the british we underestimate

burned their clothing here only their shoes were tossed into the grave and buried with them. is a corporal. after time victor gone child was the head of the central election commission he stood up against president look who wanted more power gone child was trying to stop him brute force was deployed against going child and his staff during the referendum reformulated all of the 4th quarter peace started k.g.b. agents and special units blocked their offices. preventing gunshot from entering the washroom put you on their property the witness from the death squad tells us that there was a reward of a $1000.00 for murdering gone shot. if you can all kind of blown up really just lost a matter on it and they were given a reason for getting rid of gone charge. in the

store with noble we were told later on charge had evidence showing that lucas shank it come to power illegitimately and that the vote in 1996 was rigged. that in the storm but gone child was in possession of this evidence. here when you were brilliant the girl that they told us afterwards that we had eliminated him because of this compromising material that we want to keep your. own child zachary enco and cross off ski with the most prominent victims of the looks schenker regime but they were not the only ones. every year the vigil in minsk commemorates the victims.

with the disappearance of the 3 politicians the country's chances of democratic development also vanished yes it was good news there is remorse there is a sense of guilt if these people were still alive things would be different in belarus today was. a lot of things would be better today and most importantly there would be no fear we would have a say in things of saccharine corner gonchar was still alive. only vote shows us a figure of an angel. it's a present from the eldest daughter of the minister of the interior who disappeared only visited her in germany. she said this angel is for you elena zucker nccam editor self it's a guardian angel. on the evening of may 7th 1999 your reason i had nobody to help protect him.

the death squad drove him to a military training ground around 20 minutes outside of minsk. the pistol that was used to assassinate him was a special model built for close range use the official weapon for executions in bellary.

in northern germany this is where your family lives in exile his widow 2 daughters and grandchildren who never saw they grandfather. elena is the eldest she works as a sales woman and is the only member of her family to publicly discuss their plight . she and her family came to germany a year after her father disappeared and reluctantly applied for asylum. could not receive up to the year for you on that when we arrived in germany we already had tickets for our return flight we came here to report in a democratic country on the situation in our home country. that was all we were planning to do. on us on our subsiding of the earth then we got a call that the k.g.b. had started criminal investigations accusing us of vilifying the honor and dignity of the belarus president and the state because it's actually the so that. today

is the 1st time that eleanor has heard about the witness and his statement regarding the details of her father's death. at 1st she is skeptical and struggles with her emotions so. it's a fact that yes i hope the facts are true and they can be checked. of course it is difficult to hear about this and to see the burial sites. let alone to hear how it happened. you need nerves of steel. are the facts correct they could be initial answers to this question in strasbourg christiane and i got to listen to the witness statement great is a defense lawyer from cyprus 15 years ago he investigated the disappearance of the

bellerose opposition politicians to the council of europe. is still following the cases today the council of europe scrutinizes human rights and all the more closely in the case of bella reduce the ability we have today to run the vince again investigation belarus seems very small. that's a problem well the file as far as we are concerned never close the file would close the day when a probe an investigation is conducted and there are findings as to up hold up and police does appear people it's impossible for these abductions and murders to have taken place without the consent to put it mildly of very very high officials and when i say very high officials. my mind goes to the president.

was most of the right he knew about it maybe he didn't know i can't be sure but i think he did know. accusations that barely reach alexander lukashenko for many years the president of belarus was not welcome in the west that changed in nov 29th chain. the austrian president received the dictator from minsk in vienna it was looking visit to an e.u. country in many years. at the press conference the question of the opposition politicians who disappeared was rawest. did not answer but he admitted that he rules his country in an authoritarian mannah. just push. towards

it i also want the citizens of our country to be absolutely sovereign and independent but we are only a self-sufficient independent and our citizens are only as free as our situation allows us and that situation is very complicated this muscle actually. up to murdering zecher and the killers drug but to minsk. gorecki says he had no choice he had to take part in the assassination.

to the will doing was but there was no girl in long mind to question that deep down inside. but when a young man receives an order for your part of the system or you are not. yeah so i knew i had to follow this through the bros of the country if i had failed i would have ended up in the same hole in the ground. income. for the council of europe investigators 2nd rank those murder was clearly the work of a death squad. 'd a death wish walk. by publish a book. for peace or just. the officer allegedly responsible has already been named in an official document from minsk which was passed to investigators from the bellerose public prosecutor's office

at that school. house. on behalf of the state that's why they used the pistol from or w. for the visual executions. just to give you done appearance that these were all fish alex ignitions. and that's a kind of message does yours up a non-story say you know this is not obvious sure but it is really us with so someone to put the pressure to put the terror on the orders. after the murder the assassins bring the body back to minsk. the car leaves the city motorway and heads for a cemetery. the group commander colonel public disappears with the corpse in the direction of the crime atory him there is no trace of the body after that.

the witness statement severely incriminates dimitri pappy a chink or a highly decorated officer in the bellerose ministry of internal affairs did the man who deployed the sober special unit as a death squad also murdered the opposition politicians. we soldiers were just carrying out orders we only arrested the man. we didn't call the trigger we didn't carry out the liquidation order or did that he was the one who pulled the trigger our witness is not obliged to incriminate himself therefore some doubts still remain as to what actually happened the families of those left behind continue to demand justice for the events of 20 years ago gorecki has a message for them but most of all for the relatives of the dead. here. by express my deepest condolences. i was involved in these matters and i offer my

apologies and i can show you where they are buried on the matter you know what i knew. everything else depends on you and the judicial system in belarus a lot of this is. words of remorse which need to be processed. on the hook to tail ken i accepted. and examined how big it. he was and what i thought they had chosen people with no family or relatives in bella ruse to carry out the assassinations so that they could also be liquidated afterwards. if being daughter to the. i'm surprised that a witness has turned up who is willing to talk about it openly. give a get a clue. elena zachary and co finds her response later

directed at the man who was an accessory to the murder of her father. at the new one. if you will it's just it's not about him it's about the whole system behind him and you just said yes we cannot be blamed personally. i'm not but you know she died for the power yards people like him are dependent on this system and they're forced to commit it's gruesome crimes. even if i said this to him i can't say it to the thousands of others who served with him recently minister of. the political system in belarus systematically violates human rights the flags of 47 member states can be seen outside the council of europe building in strasbourg the bella reuss flag is not among them in order to become a member bella reuss would 1st have to face up to its past otherwise it will remain an outsider in europe you can't consider a society as

a wealthy and i would say a consolidated society without the old but the capacity to the possibility to know what happened we can't condemn that that but 1st we must know must clearly know what is responsible. in forth his appearance is a way to i the truth i thing they all democracies of europe. we do not. accept. without solving the important issue of that is appearances and many other problems as one of the other axis is not only these problems. these i can describe it in sunny port on. the

tip of the ice spec we should everybody sees but. they've been there what are they are these have be. a civil rights and liberties of violated in belarus it's the only country in europe with the death penalty is still in full list the media is firmly in the hands of the state there is hope for change mainly among young people and human rights activists who can still remember the events of 20 years ago when the opposition was brutally eliminated. therefore i believe that the disappearance of the politicians and bella ruth will be resolved it's no longer just a matter for the government history has taught us that. in latin america similar cases were investigated 30 years later and are still being investigated. and bella reuss is in europe to go on with. europe has not forgotten bellerose all the opposition politicians who disappeared. human rights activists from amnesty

international have planted trees for them in the dutch city of and hovan. one see it as an hour's vigil in the growth of remembrance. when i get a letter most of that letter writing we are wounded by our past in this war and will never heal. it will always open up again in our memories in our dreams.

of not being able to say goodbye to someone not being able to bury him is the worst punishment. there is the summer. because i knew. the past is a lifelong burden. it is only when the murders have been resolved that this burden may become lifetime for those left behind as well as the batteries.

borehole. in there and david and this is a climate change. happiness in 3 books. for you to. get smarter for free we both want you to. 7 look for even beethoven's pastoral symphony is the foundation of an international art project. to mark the 50th anniversary of the composer's 1st beethoven worldwide. through project starts june 4th on t.w. .

this is g.w. news from berlin tonight the family of the african american man who died in police custody makes a plea for peace and an end to the. c problem. urges mourners to turn outrage over the death of his brother george in.