Jury visits death path

Adam Lebor
Wednesday 17 February 1999 00:02 GMT
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A BRITISH court convened in the village of Domachevo in western Belarus yesterday, with judge and jury visiting the site in a forest where Anthony Sawoniuk allegedly slaughtered Jews in the Second World War.

The 77-year-old, who now lives in south London, denieskilling two men and two women in Domachevo between September and December 1942.

The case is the first war crimes trial in British history and the first time that a British court has convened on foreign soil. Judge Humphrey Potts and 12 jurors arrived in Belarus on Monday.

Yesterday they began to relive the horror that was visited on Domachevo after German forces occupied parts of the Soviet Union.

Led by Belarussian prosecutors, the court walked down the "path of death", the route from the Jewish ghetto to a nearby forest, where 3,800 Jews were killed and dumped in mass graves. Nearby was the site where Sawoniuk allegedly slew his four victims, after they escaped one of the massacres.

Review, front

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