January 15, 2021

New twist in Sheremet murder case as audio recording allegedly implicates Belarusian KGB

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A sign asking “Who killed Pavlo?” in front of the new memorial to Pavlo Sheremet in Kyiv

RFE/RL

A sign asking “Who killed Pavlo?” in front of the new memorial to Pavlo Sheremet in Kyiv. The case has yet to be solved.

KYIV – Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka allegedly ordered the country’s security agency to plot the assassination of journalist Pavlo Sheremet with an explosive device in 2012, according to audio recordings that a former Belarusian spy chief released to a European news outlet.

Per those recordings, which were given to the EU Observer, Vadzim Zaytsau, who headed the Belarusian State Security Committee in 2008-2012, discussed a plan with his subordinates to assassinate Mr. Sheremet.

Also discussed on the recordings are the slayings of three other Belarusians in Germany on orders of the Belarusian authoritarian leader, whose re-election as president in 2020 has been disputed and has led to protests that have continued to this day. Numerous Western countries have not recognized the legitimacy of Mr. Lukashenka’s election.

Mr. Sheremet, a Belarusian-born journalist, was killed in a Kyiv car-bomb blast in a manner similar to the plan discussed in the recordings. Mr. Sheremet had made Ukraine his permanent home since 2012, working primarily for Ukrayinska Pravda, an independent online newspaper, and for the radio station Vesti. The case of his murder has yet to be solved.

Three suspects – all Ukrainian and all involved in the war with Russian-led forces in the country’s eastern Donbas region – are being held under various forms of custody for Mr. Sheremet’s murder.

The three other targets discussed in the assassination plan are presumed to be living in Germany and they are believed to still be alive.

The Belgian-based EU Observer had a NATO-member country expert and a forensics expert in the U.S. assess the recording.

It “sounds like the same guy,” an unnamed source told the media outlet.  A forensic examination by Catalin Grigoras, director of the National Center for Media Forensics at the University of Colorado, said that the legitimacy of the audio file was inconclusive.  Still, she added, no noticeable traces of audio manipulation were detected on the recording.

Mr. Zaytsau’s words were allegedly recorded in his office using a hidden device on April 11, 2012, during a briefing of the Belarusian security service’s elite counter-terrorist unit in Minsk.

In particular, the voices on the recording could be heard plotting the assassination of Mr. Sheremet, who at that time lived and worked in Russia. At the meeting, the task was given to murder the journalist with an explosive device and to make it noticeable to the public.

After the recordings became public, Ukrainian investigators acknowledged having received the recordings and said they were studying them.

Ukrainian Deputy Internal Affairs Minister Anton Herashchenko told Ukrainian media on January 6 that the revelations “do not alter the original version of the criminal investigation.”

Ihor Makar, a former member of the Belarusian special forces, who distributed the audio recording, said he is ready to testify before the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine. He also said that he passed the relevant evidence to the Ukrainian side in December 2020.

“We did everything to make it public,” Mr. Makar said.

He further added that “Ukrainian special services” had contacted him and that he is ready “to cooperate. … When the Ukrainian side is ready for me to arrive and testify, I am ready,” he said.

Mr. Zaytsau also notes on the recording that the Belarusian leader, who claimed victory in the August 2020 presidential election amid widespread claims of fraud and ongoing protests, had allocated $1.5 million in an off-the-books fund to carry out the assassinations.

Per the EU Observer, in the audio recording of the meeting, participants can be heard discussing the use of poisons, explosives, and car breakdowns to achieve the goals. Those plans included the killing in Germany of Oleh Alkaiev, a former prison warden in Belarus, Vladimir Borodach, an ex-colonel, and Vyacheslav Dudkin, who was the chief of the country’s anti-corruption agency.

Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov told reporters on January 5 that investigators are still examining the potentially new evidence.

“In December, we received a little more material than was published in the press, which shows us that among the Belarusian secret services until 2012 were discussed issues related to the murder of Pavlo Sheremet. We accepted these materials, and, since then, we have made several international legal orders. We got our hands on quite a lot of documents, and now they are being studied,” Mr Avakov said.

In December 2019, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Mr. Avakov held a briefing on the Sheremet case with members of the country’s national police.

Former military sergeant and musician Andriy Antonenko, military medic Yana Duhar and cardiac surgeon and war volunteer Yulia Kuzmenko were detained and held as possible murder suspects.

That investigation alleged that Ms. Duhar conducted surveillance a day before the bomb was planted and that Ms. Kuzmenko planted the explosive under Mr. Sheremet’s car.

However, both the news media and the suspects’ lawyers have found numerous inconsistencies in the investigators’ report.

Mr. Antonenko’s defense team has claimed that he is taller than the male who appears on a video released by the police.

Ms. Duhar’s lawyers insist she has an alibi which can be confirmed by documents and witnesses and that evidence being used against her is incomplete and biased.

Mr. Kuzmenko maintains the investigation is seriously flawed. According to his defense, at the time of Mr. Sheremet’s murder, Ms. Duhar was not acquainted with the other two suspects; Mrs. Kuzmenko and Mr. Antonenko had communicated with each other only a few times.

Advocacy organizations like the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group have questioned the veracity of the case.

Investigators have since partly altered their version of the case to omit the phrase that the three suspects are “ultra-nationalists.”

Mr. Antonenko has been in pre-trial detention since December 2019.

Ms. Duhar and Ms. Kuzmenko were detained the same month, but were subsequently remanded under house arrest. Then in July 2020, Ms. Duhar was released from house arrest. Ms. Kuzmenko has remained in house arrest since August 2020.

Mr. Sheremet’s mother, Lyudmila Sheremet, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in December 2019 that she does not know if the suspects are guilty or not, but that she is afraid “that innocent people may be hurt” as officials try to show they’re making headway in the case.

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