A photograph on social media exhibits a brown-haired girl smiling within the sunshine subsequent to a blooming flower mattress and a wall with a particular graffiti tag. German police are actually investigating allegations that her husband, a former Belarusian jail officer, subjected inmates to beatings and abuse.
Her husband is Dzmitri Shynvize, who spent some 20 years working at Babruysk jail, 100 kilometers southeast of Minsk, rising to a senior place. Former inmates on the jail have given RFE/RL’s Belarus Service detailed accounts of mistreatment by him, together with being strangled with a shawl and being held bare in a cage.
The {photograph} of Shynvize’s spouse was taken on Goethestrasse in Schwerin, a fairly lakeside city in northern Germany, and posted on Russian social media website VKontakte. It appeared in a report by exiled Belarusian information outlet Nasha Niva in mid-August, which said that the couple had moved to Germany and adjusted their surname.
In September, German state prosecutors instructed RFE/RL that the police had been investigating.
“The Schwerin public prosecutor’s workplace acquired a corresponding assertion of information from a citizen…. The case is now being investigated,” they mentioned.
Now, a company of former Belarusian safety officers, Belpol, has mentioned that it has handed over proof of Shynvize’s “alleged involvement within the torture and ill-treatment of political prisoners” to German authorities which might be investigating.
The Prison’s ‘Chief Overseer’
Former political prisoners instructed RFE/RL that Shynvize, 44, was successfully the “chief overseer” of inmates.
Vadzim Yermashuk, who served time in Babruysk from March 2022 to June 2024, mentioned Shynvize was fired three or 4 months earlier than his launch.
“There had been rumors he was dismissed for abuse of energy, as a result of there have been so many complaints. Everyone hated him — not solely political prisoners however atypical convicts too,” he mentioned.
Yermashuk recalled Shynvize subjecting him to homophobic abuse and strangling him with a shawl.
“He smiled, handed one finish of the headband to a different guard, held the opposite himself, and began choking me,” he mentioned.
Yermashuk was then given 15 days solitary confinement. The expertise, he mentioned, pushed him near suicide: “For two weeks I thought of leaping from a third-floor toilet window.”
He added that different inmates instructed him Shynvize beat them with a truncheon and compelled them into stress positions.
Another political prisoner, Aleh Kulesha, spent months on the jail in 2022. He recounted Shynvize making new arrivals kneel with their heads pressed to the bottom and palms raised to show their handcuffs.
“We stayed like that for about ten minutes within the snow,” he mentioned. Kulesha additionally mentioned Shynvize ordered him to be held bare in a cage for hours as a punishment for talking Belarussian. Shynvize, he mentioned, “instructed me he was Russian by origin, Russian by passport.”
Shynvize, who’s now reportedly going by the identify Schoenwiese, may face prosecution in Germany for actions in Belarus.
Legal Challenges
In June, a German court docket gave a life sentence to a Syrian physician, Alaa Mousa, who tortured prisoners underneath the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad. German courts have additionally tried crimes dedicated in Rwanda, Congo, and Gambia.
But there’s a excessive bar for such instances.
“If Shynvize could be accused of torture as against the law in opposition to humanity, the German courts have full jurisdiction,” Andoni Filpa, a Munich-based lawyer, instructed RFE/RL. But a prosecution could possibly be suspended if Shynvize left the nation, he added.
Shynvize’s present whereabouts should not clear, and it is usually not clear if an arrest warrant has been issued. German authorities have neither confirmed nor denied Nasha Niva’s report that Shynvize had obtained German citizenship through his German roots.
Yermashuk mentioned he want to meet Shynvize “to look him within the eyes in a free nation.”
Kulesha additionally mentioned he want to confront Shynvize.
“I actually wish to meet him and say: ‘So, in Germany do you converse Russian, or have you ever realized German?’ In Belarus he by no means managed to study Belarusian,” he mentioned.
