Capital punishment in Belarus

[1] Also known as an Exceptional Measure of Punishment (Russian: Исключительная Мера Наказания, ИМН),[2] the death penalty has been a part of the country's legal system since gaining independence from the Soviet Union on August 25, 1991.

[6]As per the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus, capital punishment can be imposed for the following acts: Most of the death penalty convictions were for murder committed under aggravating circumstances.

In 1993, four economic crimes that would have resulted in death sentences during the Soviet era were removed from the list of capital offenses by a vote of parliament and were replaced by prison terms without parole.

On December 7, 2022, Belarusian lawmakers approved a bill which punishes high treason among officials and military personnel with the death penalty.

[15][16][17][18] On March 9, 2023, President Alexander Lukashenko signed a bill into law which allows the use of the death penalty on officials and military servicemen convicted of high treason.

[20] According to the book The Death Squad by Oleg Alkayev [ru; be; be-tarask; de], on the day of execution the convict is transported to a secret location where he is told by officials that all appeals have been rejected.

According to Alkayev, "The whole procedure, starting with the announcement about denied appeals and ending with the gunshot, lasts no longer than two minutes".

[22] The United Nations Human Rights Committee issued the following opinion of the execution process in Belarus after the mother of subsequently executed prisoner Anton Bondarenko petitioned the Committee to spare her son's life: "[the process has] the effect of intimidating or punishing families by intentionally leaving them in a state of uncertainty and mental distress…[and that the] authorities' initial failure to notify the author of the scheduled date for the execution of her son, and their subsequent persistent failure to notify her of the location of her son's grave amounts to inhuman treatment of the author, in violation of article 7 of the Covenant [prohibiting torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment].

[32] Due to some of the practices of the MVD, such as the non-disclosure of the graves of the executed, this is a violation of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe protocol to make information about capital punishment open to the public.

[10] More recently a parliamentary special working group announced plans to conduct a public opinion poll, but the Information and Analytical Center with the Administration of the President took over this undertaking.

The Center has released its report, "Public Opinion about the Activity of the Organs of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Belarus," which included the questions about death penalty and the attitudes of Belarusian citizens about abolition of capital punishment.

The Court stated that either the President or the National Assembly could make the decision to suspend or completely abolish the death penalty.

[38] Subsequently, in October 2005, the Parliament adopted an amendment to the Criminal Code declaring that the continued use of the death penalty was on a temporary basis only.