BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

27/10/2009

Belarus upholds death penalty for youth

AFP

By law the death sentence in Belarus is carried out by shooting and is not made public.

Belarus' supreme court Tuesday upheld a death sentence handed to a 26-year-old youth charged with murder, in defiance of European calls for a moratorium on capital pubishment in the country.

Andrei Zhuk was sentenced to death by a Minsk regional court on July 22 after he pleaded guilty with an accomplice to the murder of a man and a woman in February 2009.

Death sentences for Zhuk and another man, Vasily Yuzepchuk, sentenced on June 29, were announced after the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe voted to restore Belarus' guest status in the body on condition that Minsk impose a moratorium on the death penalty.

Yuzepchuk, 30, was charged by a court in southwest Belarus with involvement in six murders in the region in 2007 and 2008. He was arrested in January 2009.

By law the death sentence in Belarus is carried out by shooting and is not made public. It is not clear when the last execution took place in the country.

Rights activists say the bodies of those executed are not handed over to their families nor are relatives informed of their place of burial.

The former Soviet republic ruled by strongman President Alexander Lukashenko -- whose regime was once dubbed "Europe's last dictatorship" by Washington -- has protested the Council of Europe's condition for guest status.

It is the only European country that is not a member of the 47-member rights body after Minsk was booted from the group in 1997 over multiple violations.

Source:

http://www.javno.com/en-world/belarus-upholds-death-penalty-for-youth_279519

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