Belarus president goes back on death penalty moratorium :: Charter'97 :: News

Minsk - Belarus` authoritarian President Aleksander Lukashenko on Friday announced the effective cancellation of a moratorium on death penalties, according to a Friday Interfax news agency report. A bill submitted by Lukashenko to the country`s rubber stamp parliament amended the law to allow death penalties, as soon as the moratorium on state executions is lifted.

Belarus` government announced a moratorium on death penalties shortly after the former Soviet state became independent in 1991, but the punishment remained in the criminal code.

The moratorium on state executions is temporary and may be cancelled, in which case death penalty sentences may be carried out. By Belarusian law Lukashenko could nullify the moratorium with an executive order.

Persons convicted for first degree murder may legitimately be killed by the state once the moratorium is lifted, the report said.

The amendment placed in jeopardy the lives of an unknown number of Belarusians imprisoned because the death penalty moratorium prevented their execution.

Europe`s last remaining dictatorship, Belarus does not make public details of its prison population, including numbers of death row inmates.

Human rights activists generally estimate Belarus` prison population at between fifty and one hundred thousand, of whom a few hundred were sentenced to death before the moratorium on executions.