The Prosecutor General's Office of Lithuania officially announced that it launched a criminal probe and began a pre-trial investigation into the violence against the Belarusian Maksim Kharoshyn.
Maksim was tortured in Minsk. He ended up in a hospital and then fled to Lithuania. On November 30, on behalf of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya's office, Lawyer Giedrius Danėlius applied to the Prosecutor General's Office of the Republic of Lithuania to investigate Kharoshyn's case. The Lithuanian Prosecutor General's Office checked the materials and assessed them as having signs of a crime under universal jurisdiction under the Criminal Code of the Republic of Lithuania.
Alexander Dabravolski, an advisor to Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, comments: “This is a huge step towards justice. We are already preparing applications and evidence for new cases. It is important to remember: everyone who has experienced violence from the regime can submit evidence to the Unified Crime Registration Book (access via VPN). The case file that lawyers compose from the ECRB database can become a pretext for new prosecutions under universal jurisdiction. The period of impunity for those who repress peaceful Belarusians is over. Now each of them may appear on the Interpol lists”.
