On behalf of ten Belarusians, four German lawyers filed a criminal complaint with the Office of the Federal Public Prosecutor in Germany and alleged that Aliaksandr Lukashenka had committed crimes against humanity. They stressed that there was no justice in Belarus, and no criminal case had yet been brought against security forces for their crimes. So the lawyers went to the German prosecutor’s office.
German law made it possible to prosecute under the principle of universal jurisdiction for crimes prohibited by international law and committed in other states. Recently, a member of the Syrian regime’s secret service responsible for crimes against humanity in Syria was trialed in Germany and sentenced to 4.5 years in prison.
Previously, the Lithuanian General Prosecutor’s Office had opened a criminal case under universal jurisdiction for the beating of Maksim Kharoshyn. More than 10 applications are ready to be submitted in the Czech Republic and Poland. In Lithuania, 17 persons have already applied, and 20 more applications are in preparation. If you are a victim of an offense – bot @bysol_jurisdiction_bot will help you apply for the protection of your rights under universal jurisdiction.
The United Nations mechanism for investigating and documenting crimes against humanity in Belarus and the International Accountability Platform (IAPB) for collecting evidence of human rights violations in Belarus have already been launched to document violations.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya: “I thank our international partners for helping the Belarusians to defend their rights. Impunity will never prevail in Belarus, and today’s news is a clear example of that. The crimes of the regime cannot be hidden in the past – they await fair justice in the present and the future”.
