Prosecutor’s Office finds illegal closing of criminal case on vandalism in Kurapaty
The Prosecutor’s office of Minsk district found illegal the cessation of the criminal persecution of the youngsters suspected in acts of vandalism in Kurapaty forest, the place of mass burial of victims of Stalin’s repressions.
In his letter the vice-prosecutor of Minsk district Ernest Kairo called the decision of Barauliany police to stop the case ‘unlawful and groundless’.
On 29 January the case was directed to additional preliminary investigation, the BelaPAN informs.
Bear in mind that later in the evening the activists of the Conservative-Christian Party BPF Ales Makau and Aleh Svirydau detained two teenagers, who pulled down two crosses in the alley in Kurapaty forest. Makau and Svirydau called the police and gave testimonies against the detainees.
On 12 January it became known that the police department of Barauliany village soviet stopped the criminal persecution of the two suspects. The head of the invetstigative department of Barauliany police department Ihar Baradach said that there wasn’t enough evidence for passing the case to the court and punishing the two under-aged suspects.
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Bear in mind that these are not the first cases of vandalism in Kurapaty forest, where, according to different calculations, the butchers of NKVD shot some 40-200 thousand people.
At the end of 1990 somebody broke the shield on the cross of suffering.
What concerns the memorial sign ‘From the US people to Belarus for commemoration’ – it has survived twelve acts of vandalism already.
In December 2005 unknown vandals twice desecrated crosses in Kurapaty with swastika and Satanist inscriptions, the monument to the Jews who perished there and the icon of Our Lady, painted by the artist Aliaksei Marachkin. They broke crosses several times. Several criminal cases have been brought on the acts of vandalism, but the criminals haven’t been found. This year the Cross of Suffering was broken on the eve of the Dziady holiday (Ancestors’ Day) and was restored by member so the CCP BPF.
The public circles addressed the authorities with the request to provide the guarding of Kurapaty, which is a first-rate historical and cultural value. However, in response the police department of Minsk oblast proposed that the organizing committee for commemoration of victims of Stalin’s repressions paid for protection.
