Human rights activists think no investigation is being carried out in Belarus.

On June 25, Volha Zakharanka received a letter from the prosecutor’s office saying the period of the preliminary investigation in criminal case #110352 over disappearance of her husband, firmer interior minister of Belarus Yury Zakharanka, has been extended until September 24, 2010 by the Deputy Prosecutor General of Belarus.

Aleh Vouchak learnt this from Y. Varauka, a special crimes investigator from the prosecutor’s office of Minsk.

“The investigation has been lasting for the 12th year. I have recently known that that the Belarusian laws allow to close a case on abduction 15 years after the incident if traces of a person are not found. The UN Working Group on Involuntary Disappearances says it won’t stop verification and will demand to continue investigation the case of political abductions in Belarus. In real fact, no investigations are being conducted in Belarus. Nobody is called in, interrogated, the versions published by the media are not checked. This only confirms the opinion of the international community on involvement of high-ranking officials in abductions and killings of the oppositionists,” Aleh Vouchak told in an interview to charter97.org.

General Yury Zakharanka disappeared on May 7, 1999. Witnesses of the abduction, found not by investigators, but by a public commission, state several men forced Zakharanka in a car and take him away.

Zakharanka had been dismissed some year before, as he didn’t share the views of Alyaksandr Lukashenka and his associates. Former minister was highly respected by his colleagues, he planned to create the Union of Military Officers. His opposition activity seemed especially dangerous to the authorities.