MINSK, 9 November (BelTA) – Belarus sent a request to a number of countries asking them to provide legal assistance with the investigation of the genocide of the Belarusian people and some of these countries responded positively, Prosecutor General Andrei Shved told reporters prior to an open dialogue with students and teachers of International University MITSO, BelTA has learned.
“We sent over 70 requests for legal assistance to more than 30 states. We keep track on each of them and do what we can to find out where living SS men, executioners reside so that they will be either brought to court in the countries where they are hiding, or they will be handed over to us for the administration of justice. We are working on it. We monitor progress on each such document and will keep seeking justice,” Andrei Shved said.
The prosecutor general noted that legal assistance to Belarus is primarily provided by Russia. “We have established direct and steady contacts; joint working groups have been put together. We work virtually in the online mode. Today we are receiving a huge number of documents from Russian archives, millions of pages, and we generalize and systematize them all. They help us to identify, among other things, previously unknown places of mass extermination of people,” he said.
Other countries that responded to the request for legal assistance include countries of Latin America, Andrei Shved continued. “Our correspondence suggests that we are engaged in a direct, specific legal dialogue on specific individuals. It is too early to talk about the results of this dialogue, but it shows constructive and specific work of law enforcement agencies of several states,” he said.
However, not all countries are willing to cooperate. In particular, more than ten requests for legal assistance were sent to Germany. “So far, no meaningful information has been received from there, but we will insist that Germany provide the necessary documents,” Andrei Shved emphasized. He also specified that such requests were sent to the United States, Poland, the Baltic states, Chile, Brazil, Australia and a number of other states.
According to the prosecutor general, painstaking work is now underway in the country to collect the necessary documents and create legal conditions for Belarusian courts to convict dead Nazi criminals and “judicially acknowledge their atrocities on the territory of the BSSR,” he said.
“It is very important that prosecutors throughout the country try to communicate to every child, every young person information about the horrors of Nazism, fascism and make them understand that this should not happen again,” Andrei Shved added.
