Soldier Emil Chechko, who fled Poland in Belarus, was charged with desertion. This was announced on Tuesday, December 21, at the Polish prosecutor’s office.
“Emil Ch., A soldier who fled abroad last week, is accused of committing a crime of desertion,” said Aleksandra Skrzynizh, a spokeswoman for the Warsaw District Prosecutor’s Office, quoted by the Polsatnews.pl website.
The charge was brought under article 339 paragraph 3 of the Criminal Code of Poland. The maximum penalty is imprisonment for up to 10 years.
A day earlier, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus accepted for consideration a petition for granting refugee status to Chechko.
On the same day, it was reported that the Investigative Committee (IC) of Belarus intends to interrogate the serviceman to verify his statements about the facts of the killing of people at the border.
On December 20, Chechko, who fled Poland and asked for political asylum in Belarus, spoke about the killings of migrants by Polish security forces. Chechko accused the security forces of his country of systematic killings of migrants, as well as two volunteers. He believes that the situation should be investigated by the Red Cross. Chechko noted that he also had to kill people.
On the same day, the Polish prosecutor’s office opened a criminal case against a soldier who escaped to Belarus, he faces up to 10 years in prison. The serviceman is planned to be put on the wanted list. Former President of Poland Bronislaw Komorowski believes that the responsibility for the escape of a Polish soldier to Belarus lies with the country’s defense minister, Mariusz Blaszczak.
The situation with migrants worsened in early November. A large group of refugees who were in Belarus approached the border with Poland in a forest belt. The migrants cut barbed wire at the border of the two countries and asked to be allowed into the territory of the European Union. European countries blame Minsk for the migration crisis, which denies any involvement in the increase in the flow of refugees.
