Former official under Belarus President Lukashenko to face Swiss trial over enforced disappearances

By JAMEY KEATEN and YURAS KARMANAU
Associated Press

GENEVA (AP) — A former member of Belarus President Aleksander Lukashenko’s special security forces is to face trial in Switzerland next month for the forced disappearances of political opponents in the late 1990s. Activists on Wednesday called it a “watershed moment” in international justice that could trigger other prosecutions abroad of officials in the former Soviet republic. The case against Yuri Harauski is due on Sept. 19-20 in the northern Swiss regional court of St. Gallen and focuses on the enforced disappearances of three people in 1999. Harauski lives in Switzerland, where he applied for asylum in 2018. He has made high-profile confessions about his involvement in the killings of Lukashenko’s political opponents in 1999.