Builders unearth human remains in Orsha

Construction workers in Orsha found many human bones while building facilities in the city for this year's national end-of-harvest festival Dazhynki. It is unclear who the buried people were and how they died. Orsha-based journalist Andrey Hrableuski told ERB that workers have recently unearthed 20 skeletons on the former Soviet prison site.

"They found 20 skeletons exactly, forensic experts said so. No one knows the remains of how many people had been discovered earlier," he said.

Workers say they often unearth human bones and they are no longer surprised by it. Under the law, prosecutors must launch a criminal investigation if human remains are discovered. Hrableuski says that investigators usually close criminal cases because tests show that the people in question died more than 50 years ago. They say that workers might have dug a former cemetery or a mass grave containing the remains of people murdered by the Nazis.

Investigator Inesa Rahuleva of the Orsha District Prosecutor's Office says the office does not keep record of how many remains have been found. She said she inspected remains only once, when 42 skeletons were discovered. "Experts said the remains were 50 and more years old. It is not the Prosecutor's Office's business to find out were they victims or not," she told ERB

Rahuleva said that investigators found no objects that could help identify the remains or any archival records about the grave.

Hrableuski says the people might have been executed by Josef Stalin's secret police, NKVD. He met with relatives of some Orsha residents killed in the 1930s.

"I found people who have papers indicating that their relatives had been executed by shooting in that Orsha prison in the 1930s. They were exonerated later. It is quite possible that these are the remains of their relatives."