War veteran says Stalin's police killed his father in woods near Homel

Developments in the the case of the execution site near Homel took an unexpected turn, after Alexander Kotov, a war veteran and a resident of the Homel district said that the Stalin's secret police (NKVD) killed his father in 1937.
Mr Kotov said that he approached the KGB in 1993 and familiarized himself with the case of his father, Fiodor Kotov.

According to the KGB files, the father was executed on October 28, 1937 in the vicinity of the 9th kilometer of the Chernigov highway.

The 52sn search-and rescue batallion of the Belarus's Ministry of Defense recently started digging at the south-eastern suburbs of the city of Homel. The remains of around three dozens of people that were executed with a shot in the head were found in the area.

Local residents maintain that it was the Stalin's secret police (NKVD) that carried out the executions at the Schakatov Woods near Homel. However, the Ministry of Defense said they could not prove it, suggesting that the people were the victims of the Nazi..

The activists of the organizing committee to establish the Belarusian Christian Democracy party taped the testimony of war veteran Alexander Kotov on video, reports Belapan.

БелаПАН