Aleh Vouchak: Byabenin’s case cannot be solved without real investigation

The Prosecutor General must open a criminal case and investigate all details of the death of the journalist, the human rights activist stated.

The OSCE experts have come to a conclusion that a Belarusian journalist Aleh Byabenin had committed suicide by hanging, Radio Svaboda reports.

According to the OSCE, the experts from Norway and Sweden, who arrived to Minsk and studied the materials relating to the circumstances around the death, have come to the conclusion which coincides with the official story of Aleh Byabenin’s death.

A quote from the press-release by the OSCE:

“The experts' evaluation and analysis is that, on the basis of all the evidence and information available to them, the cause and manner of death was suicide by hanging.”

A former investigator of the prosecutor’s office, a human rights activist Aleh Vouchak thinks that in the conditions in which the OSCE experts were working, they could not make any other conclusions except for the one which coincide with the official story of the suicide.

“If I were in the place of the experts, I would refuse to work with such a limited authority, which does not allow conducting an independent investigation. They were also to take into account that there are many mysterious deaths of oppositionists in this country, that disappearances of political opponents of the current regime had not been solved yet,” Aleh Vouchak says. He speaks in favour of opening a criminal case by all means.

“There are many questions about the incident site examination. The same concerns the bodily injury: some people saw them, others not. There are many doubts, and when doubts exist, it is obvious that Prosecutor General Vasilevich must initiate a criminal case and study all the circumstances around the death of Aleh Byabenin,” the human rights activist says.