Belarus’ Investigative Committee on actions of Polish security forces: refugees were lined up along burial pits and shot with service weapons

The shocking details of the testimony of Polish serviceman Emil Czeczko, who asked for political asylum in Belarus in December 2021, have been made public today in Grodno by Aleksandr Rudko, who heads the Directorate for the Investigation of Crimes against Personality and Public Safety of the Main Investigative Department at the Investigative Committee's Central Office

The case under investigation includes the testimony of Polish serviceman Emil Czeczko, who escaped to Belarus and was repeatedly interrogated as a witness. He testified that since June 2021, together with other servicemen and (presumably) representatives of the Border Guard Service, he had personally participated in and witnessed organised murders (including group killings) of refugees, as well as two European volunteers in the border area and nearby territory.

The bodies were buried en masse in the forest. The refugees were lined up along pre-dug burial pits and shot with service weapons...

According to Czeczko, his service soldiers also told him about their participation in similar massacres. He said that the military killed people while drunk and also under the threat of the use of weapons against themselves by Polish border guards.

Czeczko said that in 11 days of June 2021, he personally killed and witnessed mass systematic ‘executions’ of migrants: a total of 241 people, women and children among those killed.

According to the Investigative Committee, Czeczko named some officers, information about whom is available in the materials of the criminal case, some of whom he recognised after finding them on the Internet, as his immediate superiors who were aware of Czeczko’s deployment from the unit and his assignment to protect the border and these actions. With the participation of the witness, e-fit pictures of the military personnel were drawn up, about whom he testified during the investigation of the criminal case.

According to Czeczko, the pits for mass graves of migrants contained 60-70 bodies. People were shot, including with service weapons.

The Belarusian side has sent an order to Poland to provide legal assistance, including for interrogations of the employees mentioned by Czeczko. However, the Investigative Committee confirmed, Poles unreasonably failed to fulfil the order.

The executions were led by a Polish border guard who introduced himself as Tomek. According to Czeczko, this man was an employee of the Polish counterintelligence service.