On October the 6th 2010 in Geneva the Governing Council of the Inter-Parliamentary Union anonymously adopted a resolution where it expressed its concern about the state of the investigation into the case of the disappearance of Victor Gonchar and Anatoly Krasovsky.

The IPU recalls, among other things, that:

"The investigation into the disappearance, on 16 September 1999, of Mr. Victor Gonchar and his friend Mr. Anatoly Krasovsky, after they had been forcibly abducted, has yielded no result and the authorities have consistently refuted the conclusions of a report by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe into disappearances for allegedly political reasons in Belarus (Pourgourides report), which provided evidence linking senior officials to the disappearance of Mr. Gonchar and Mr. Krasovsky; Mr. Pourgourides had gathered evidence to this effect, including a handwritten document from the then police chief, General Lapatik, the authenticity of which the Belarusian authorities have acknowledged, in which General Lapatik accuses Mr. V. Sheyman, then Secretary of the Belarusian Security Council, of having ordered the killing of Mr. Zakharenko, a former Minister of the Interior, and that the order was carried out by a special task force (SOBR unit) under the command of Colonel Pavlishenko, with the assistance of the then Minister of the Interior, Mr. Sivakov, who provided Colonel Pavlishenko with the official execution pistol temporarily removed from SIZO-1 prison; the same method was reportedly used in the execution of Mr. Gonchar and Mr. Krasovsky"; and that "according to the sources, the preliminary investigation is extended automatically without any investigation and that this may continue until the expiry of the statute of limitations, which is 15 years as of the commission of the crime; considering in this respect that, according to a letter of 18 June 2010 from the Chairmen of the Standing Committees on National Security and on International Affairs and Relations with Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), respectively, the hypothesis of no investigation taking place is far-fetched and unsubstantiated as “the authorities of the Republic of Belarus are interested in a full and objective investigation, the establishment of all the circumstances of the disappearance of Mr. Gonchar and Mr. Krasovsky, and the holding to account of the persons involved in it [...]”

The Inter-Parliamentary Union

"Remains deeply concerned that the right of the families of Mr. Gonchar and Mr. Krasovsky to be kept informed of the proceedings and procedural decisions is not respected as their petitions to be informed of and receive copies of decisions clearly affecting their interests are being rejected; calls on the parliamentary authorities to make every effort to ensure that the authorities comply with this fundamental right of the families;

Points out once again that the authorities have so far failed to refute convincingly the evidence produced in the Pourgourides report, which partly relies on the results of the initial investigation at the national level, and that they have produced no documents showing that they indeed investigated the report’s findings;

Notes in this respect with great interest that, in the framework of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) before the United Nations Human Rights Council, Belarus committed itself to examining a recommendation to the effect that it would implement the recommendations of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on disappeared persons in Belarus and ratify the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance [...]"

For the complete text of the resolution please refer to Documents.