War crimes trial jury shown maps of `road of death'

The jury in Britain's first war crimes trial has been shown maps and photographs of the area in the former Soviet republic of…

The jury in Britain's first war crimes trial has been shown maps and photographs of the area in the former Soviet republic of Belorussia (now Belarus) known as "the road of death" close to where the murders of thousands of Jews during the second World War allegedly took place.

The aerial photographs of the town of Domachevo, which was overrun by the Nazis within a few hours in June 1941, is where Mr Anthony Sawoniuk (77) is alleged to have murdered four Jews when he served as a senior officer in a civilian police force in 1942.

Mr Sawoniuk, a retired railwayman from Bermondsey, south-east London, denies the charges although he accepts he did serve in the police force in 1942.

Opening the second day of the prosecution case yesterday, Mr John Nutting QC explained to the jurors at the Old Bailey that a bakery shown in the photographs was on the edge of a ghetto used by the Germans to hold Jews before their execution.

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Pointing to a gate close to the local police station, Mr Nutting said the road beyond the gate was known locally as "the road of death" because it led to a nearby forest and sand-hills where Jews were killed and then dumped in sandpits.

Earlier this week Mr Nutting told the jury that Mr Sawoniuk had carried out the Nazi policy of genocide with enthusiasm and rose in the ranks of the civilian police force to the position of senior officer or commander by the time the Germans left the town in 1944.

Witnesses would come to the court, he said, and describe how Mr Sawoniuk took part in the stabbing of an 80-year-old Jew in Domachevo and the day in the nearby forest when he shot 15 Jewish women in the back of the head and then watched them fall into an open grave.

Other witnesses would tell the harrowing story of Mir Barlas, a Jew who was taken from Domachevo and handed over to Mr Sawoniuk and other members of the police force and was never seen again.

Mr Sawoniuk is being tried under the terms of the War Crimes Act (1991) which stipulates that it is possible to prosecute anyone living in Britain for war crimes committed during the second World War.

On Sunday members of the jury and court officials will travel to Domachevo to visit the scene of the alleged murders, the first time a British jury has convened in another country.

AFP adds from the UN war crimes tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania: Mr Eliezer Niyitegeka, a former information minister in Rwanda wanted by the UN war crimes tribunal here, has been arrested in Kenya, the Hirondelle news agency reported yesterday.

"Kenyan police came to his home Tuesday evening and arrested him," the independent Swiss-based agency said, citing a Rwandan witness in Nairobi who requested anonymity.

Mr Niyitegeka, wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda since July 1996, was information minister under the interim government led by Jean Kambanda, who himself pleaded guilty to genocide and crimes against humanity and was given a life sentence, which he has appealed.