Stories Of People Who Filed Claims Against Lukashenka To German Public Prosecutor’s Office

The dictator may be recognized as a terrorist.

Recently, a statement was filed with the Federal Prosecutor's Office of Germany on behalf of 10 people against Aliaksandr Lukashenka about committing crimes against humanity. Deutsche Welle told the stories of two of them.

“I couldn’t feel my wrists up to the elbows”

“I can barely sleep, doctors prescribe me antidepressants and sleeping pills. I still cannot feel the tips of my fingers after the tortures… Telling how you were beaten, humiliated, how they threatened to stick a baton in your anus - this is not something one would willingly share. It hurts me to recall all these things,” says Valer Samalazau, his voice trembling.

Valer Samalazau is an IT specialist from Belarus, he has worked in Great Britain since 2020, and in August he came to belarus on vacation. On August 10 he was detained when going to a meeting with his colleague.

“I was walking down the pavement. They surrounded me and started asking questions. I replied politely, showed them my ID. However, my T-shirt (with an image of a skull - edit.) has apparently become a trigger. It was just a Disney symbol of the movie The Punisher. It seems to have irritated them. They told it was a symbol of the Azov battalion. They always reminded me about that T-shirt before beating,” Valer recalls.

The British bank cards, a sim-card in English, and calls to the UK on his phone also caught the attention of the siloviki: “they decided they had caught a protest organizer”. Samalazau got the first blow in the chest in the yard near the railway station, and then, passing him from one power structure to another, they asked to pay special attention to the “foreign spy”.

“The most cruel treatment was in the Zavodzki district police department and in the paddy wagon on the way from the police department to the pre-trial detention center in Zhodzina. A paddy wagon is a torture hell on wheels. Many people there screamed, cried, prayed, someone was sick. I fainted twice because of the pain,” Valer tells. His arms were folded behind his back and tied with a wide zip tie. Having seen that he is suffering the pain without a word, they twisted his wrists even harder, accompanying this with beating.

“They bent over me and whispered: I see you are not afraid of pain. We will make it really painful.” My blood circulation stopped, and in a while I couldn’t feel my wrists up to the elbows. The pain was becoming intolerable. Then I picked up courage and asked them to loosen the ties. I told I had three children and I would not be able to feed them without hands. They rushed at me and twisted my arms behind my back even closer to the head. It was then when I lost consciousness because of pain for the first time,” Valer continues. After the second appeal everything repeated.

When Valer was delivered to the pre-trial detention center in Zhodzina, he was the only one who was ordered to stay in the paddy wagon. “They told me to bend down on my knees, and then it was necessary to stand up. I couldn’t, I fell. They pulled me up, put against the wall, and started beating me in the head, chest, stomach, and legs. Then they pushed me out of the paddy wagon. I was standing on my knees until they called out my surname. Then the masked people once again asked to pay “special attention” to me.

Valer Samalazau was released from the detention center in Zhodzina in 84 hours after detention. Two subsequent weeks he spent in a hospital with a brain trauma and the injury of both wrists. Apart from the certificate from the detention center and the hospital, no other documents related to his detention were found.

“They didn't find the protocol. My case is neither in the police department nor in Zhodzina. There was no trial,” says Valer. He filed a complaint against the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the beatings, but the initiation of a criminal case was denied “due to the lack of corpus delicti”. Back in London, Samalazau turned to lawyers in the UK to initiate a case under universal jurisdiction. But according to the law of this country, this is possible only if the accused is on its territory.

Therefore, Valer decided to join the claim filed with the German prosecutor's office. “I hope that these facts will be legally documented and recognized by the international community, and given that these crimes are without a statute of limitations, justice will be restored,” Valer said.

He is seeking justice not only for himself: “In Belarus, people are afraid to speak out, because they will immediately come to their home, take the children away, fire them from their jobs, and lock them up in prison. Considering that I am relatively safe, I would like the crimes against all my fellow citizens to be recorded.”

“They accused us of being 'puppeteers'”

Katzper Sinitskiy is a freelance journalist from Warsaw who came to Minsk in August to cover events in Belarus. He was detained on August 10 in the center of Minsk near Niamiha Street. “I was just walking down the street with my photojournalist friend. They took us by bus to the paddy wagon, and then in the paddy wagon they took us to the Frunzenski district police department of Minsk. There we were beaten, we heard a lot of insults related to our nationality. We were accused of being “puppeteers” who came to lead the protest and organize a color revolution,” says Kaptser.

As a result, he spent a little more than 72 hours in the Frunzenski district police department and the pre-trial detention center in Zhodzina. They began to beat him even before he was taken to the police station. “My friend was beaten already in the bus, he lost consciousness. I was beaten in a paddy wagon. But the worst thing was in the police department. There we were laid face down on the floor with our hands tightly fastened behind our backs, held in uncomfortable positions. We could not move, we were repeatedly frightened, they said that if we move, all our teeth will be knocked out. We were also forced to kneel with our faces on the floor. My legs were numb,” recalls Katzper.

According to him, those who could not stand in this position were additionally beaten with a truncheon: “We were repeatedly taken out into the corridor, they were beaten there. We heard other people's screams. Blood was visible. There was mental pressure: employees walked around swinging a baseball bat and we didn't know what to expect. We were not allowed to drink water, not allowed to eat, sleep, or go to the toilet. A complete chaos was going on.”