TV cameraman Dzmitry Zavadski went missing 15 years ago

Belarusian cameraman, journalist of the Russian TV channel ORT (Russian Public Television, now – the First Channel) disappeared exactly 15 years ago, July 7, 2000. At that time he was 27 years old.

In spring 1997, Zavadski was arrrested together with the ORT reporter Pavel Sharamet. They were charged with illegally crossing the Belarusian-Lithuanian border while preparing a news report. As a result, Mr. Zavadski was sentenced to 1.5 years of conditional imprisonment. In 1999-2000
Zavadski and Sharamet also worked in Chechnya, shooting the film "Chechen Diary", BelaPAN reminds.

In the morning of July 7, 2000 Zavadski left home for Minsk airport to meet Sharamet, who was supposed to arrive from Moscow. Nobody has seen the cameraman ever since. His car was found at the airport.

In 2002, the Minsk Regional Court convicted a group of former special forces soldiers headed by Valery Ihnatovich (who had met with the journalists in Chechnya) of kidnapping Zavadski. Ihnatovich and another defendant, Maksim Malik, were sentenced to life imprisonment. In 2004 the prosecutor's office closed the case on kidnapping due to the “failure to establish the location of the missing person”. In 2005 the investigation was resumed, but was again stopped in a year. The body of Dzmitry Zavadski still hasn't been found.