Polish soldier escapes to Belarus, exposes brutal crimes against migrants

Emil Czeczko, a Polish serviceman who fled to Belarus and asked for political asylum there, said that he and other Polish border guards participated in the killings of illegal migrants.

"They would field the first group and kill them, then — the second group, they were killed too. I did that too," Emil Czeczko said in an interview with Belarus 1 TV channel.

According to him, border guards had killed not only migrants — two volunteers who tried to help refugees also became their victims.

On December 17, representatives for the State Border Committee of Belarus said that a serviceman of the Polish Armed Forces, Emil Czeczko, born in 1996, who had deserted from the 11th Mazurian Artillery Regiment, was stopped by the patrol at the Tushemlya frontier post. Czeczko applied for political asylum in Belarus because he disagreed with the policy of the Polish authorities regarding the migration crisis and the practice of inhumane treatment of refugees.

Earlier, Czeczko said that in Poland, he would be portrayed as negatively as possible. Warsaw has already accused Czeczko of problems with the law.

"The soldier, who went missing yesterday, had serious problems with law and filed for dismissal from the army. He should not have been sent to serve at the border,” Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak said.

According to former President of Poland Bronislaw Komorowski, it is Defence Minister Błaszczak, who should be held accountable for the incident with the Polish serviceman.

"The person who commands everything is responsible for such situations. In this case, the Minister of National Defense must take on moral and political responsibility," said Komorowski. "It was him who sent those soldiers to the border, although they were not trained to replace either the border guards or the police," he added.

In turn, Waldemar Skrzypczak, the former commander of the Polish ground forces, said that Czeczko must be shot in the head for his act.

"He is a criminal, a deserter. He deserves a bullet in the head and demotion. I'm sorry, but it can't be otherwise," Skrzypczak, the former commander of the Polish ground forces said.

The soldier took the side of the conditional enemy "in the conditions of war." In this regard, ten years in prison, which he faces on criminal charges, can not be considered a sufficient punishment, the official added.

Belarus wants Poland to pay a price

Meanwhile, Dmitry Brylev, an official representative for the Office of the Prosecutor General of Belarus, said that Minsk would send documents to international organisations as part of the efforts to open a criminal case against Poland due to the crisis with migrants. According to him, the department has collected five volumes of evidence establishing Poland's ill-treatment of refugees.

The materials will be transferred to international and European organizations, including the European Parliament, for a legal assessment.

Since the beginning of 2021, nine bodies of illegal immigrants have been found on the territory of Poland. Border guards have reported about 40,000 illegal border crossing attempts. The Polish authorities and representatives of other EU countries hold the Belarusian authorities accountable for the outbreak of the crisis.