On appeal from a 2023 acquittal, a Swiss court on Monday convicted Yuri Harauski of the enforced disappearance of Belarusian businessman Anatoly Krasovsky in 1999.
The Cantonal Court of St. Gallen imposed a 24-month suspended prison term, reduced in view of Harauski’s cooperation and confession. The judges acquitted him on a separate count concerning former Belarusian Interior Minister Yuri Zakharenko.
Krasovsky was an opponent of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Philip Grant, founder of TRIAL International, which supported the daughters of Krasovsky and Zakharenko, said no member of the Belarusian security forces had previously been convicted by a court anywhere.
The daughters appealed after a court acquitted Harauski in 2023, finding that inconsistencies in his statements left his role unproven. In a 2019 Deutsche Welle interview, Harauski said he had taken part in the abductions of three Lukashenko opponents while serving in Belarus’s SOBR special police unit.
In the Krasovsky count, the appeals judges said the evidence established Harauski’s intent and his awareness that the businessman would be seized by force and killed. They accepted his confessions as credible but said the required intent was not established in the Zakharenko count.
The case was heard under universal jurisdiction, which allows Swiss courts to try certain crimes committed abroad. It was the first Swiss case to try enforced-disappearance charges tied to Belarus. The verdict can be appealed to the Swiss Federal Supreme Court.
