The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has strongly condemned the execution of Kiryl Kazachok, who was sentenced to death in December 2016 for killing his two children.
“Once again we stand firm against any death sentence imposed by the Belarusian judiciary and any executions carried out in that country. The execution of Kiryl Kazachok is all the more shocking since it took place secretly in October 2017, while the relatives of the convicted were only informed recently,” Yves Cruchten, PACE General Rapporteur on the abolition of the death penalty, and Andrea Rigoni, former PACE rapporteur on the situation in Belarus, said in a joint statement.
According to the rapporteurs, the death penalty is a cruel and inhuman punishment, which is ‘no longer acceptable in Europe’. The PACE has reiterated call to the Belarusian authorities to urgently put in place a moratorium on executions and to abolish the death penalty both de facto and de jure,” the rapporteurs concluded.
In January 2016, Kiryl Kazachok, a resident of village Narauchyzna (Mazyr district), strangled his daughter, 9, and then struck his son, 17, over the head with a hammer. According to the investigation, the offender wanted to take vengeance on his wife for her intention to divorce him. At the time of the murder Kazachok was intoxicated. The man, who did not appeal against the verdict to the Supreme Court. was transferred to Minsk prison where death convicts face execution.
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Belarus remains the only country in Europe that still applies capital punishment. The West has repeatedly called on the Belarusian authorities to join a global moratorium as a first step towards the abolition of death penalty.
The exact number of executions in Belarus is unknown, but local human rights defenders and journalists have worked tirelessly to uncover some information about death sentences and executions. According to the Ministry of Justice of Belarus, 245 people were sentenced to death from 1994 to 2014. Human rights NGOs believe that around 400 people have been executed since the country gained its independence in 1991; president Lukashenka granted a pardon to only one convict.
Currently, five persons are on death row in Belarus. All of them were found guilty of committing grievous crimes (murders).
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КА, belsat.eu
