Death Sentences and Executions 2013 - Europe and Central Asia

Belarus is the last country in Europe and Central Asia which still uses the death penalty. No executions were reported for 2013, for the first time since 2009. At least four death sentences were imposed, after none in 2012.

Death sentences are often imposed after unfair trials which include forced confessions.

Sentences are implemented in strict secrecy, without giving adequate notice to prisoners, their families or legal representatives, and despite requests from international bodies such as the Human Rights Committee to suspend executions while international appeals are still pending. Article 175 of the Criminal Executive Code allows the government not to return the bodies of those executed to relatives and not to communicate the place of burial.

Rygor Yuzepchuk was sentenced to death on 24 April and Pavel Selyun on 12 June, each for murders committed in 2012. Their appeals to the Supreme Court were turned down. Eduard Lykau was sentenced to death on 26 November for five murders committed in 2002, 2004 and 2011. All confirmed death sentences are automatically referred to the President for consideration of clemency. However, President Alexander Lukashenka has reportedly only granted one stay of execution since he came to power in 1994.

Alyaksandr Haryunou, aged 25, was sentenced to death by the Homel Regional Court on 14 June for the murder of a female student in 2012. His lawyer appealed the verdict and argued, according to a NGO observer, a range of fair trial violations, including that Alyaksandr Haryunou had signed a confession without a lawyer being present and that there was contradictory information about his mental health. On 22 October the Supreme Court overturned the death sentence and returned the case for re-trial. The NGO observer called this move "unprecedented".[42] But on 24 December the Homel Regional court again sentenced Alyaksandr Haryunou to death.

In January 2013, the Chairman of the Constitutional Court, Petr Miklashevich, stressed that the question of a moratorium on the death penalty in Belarus remained open and that the Court was ready to consider the issue if relevant requests are made.[43] In June, the parliamentary working group on the death penalty held a round table on "Belarus, Religion and the Death Penalty" together with the Council of Europe in Minsk.[44] There, the Patriarchal Exarch of the Belarusian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Filaret, spoke out in favour of abolition of the death penalty.

In October, the NGOs Penal Reform International and Belarus Helsinki Committee released an opinion poll finding that, when asked outright, nearly 64% of Belarusians supported the death penalty, while 31% of respondents were opposed.[45] The margin of support is significantly lower than the 80% in a 1996 referendum often referred to by the government. However, there was also widespread support for alternative measures, such as life sentences or a moratorium on executions, and only 37% supported capital punishment "unconditionally". When asked about what should happen to capital punishment in the future, 47% of respondents said it should be retained as it is at present or even expanded. In contrast, a total of 45% stated that the death penalty should be abolished – immediately or gradually – or that a moratorium on executions should be established, with the sanctity of human life and the risk of judicial error being the main reasons for opposing capital punishment.

In October, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus, endorsed by the Special Rapporteurs on the independence of the judiciary, on summary executions and on torture, as well as the head of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, urged the Government of Belarus to impose an immediate moratorium on executions. He criticized the fact that "non transparent and politically-guided courts hand down death penalty sentences at the end of a procedure without guarantees of a fair trial or the right to appeal to international bodies", and the lack of transparency and statistics on executions, and stated: "The way the death penalty is carried out in Belarus amounts to inhuman treatment."[46]

In Kazakhstan the official moratorium on executions established in December 2003 continued to be observed. A draft revision of the Criminal Code would remove the death penalty for some military crimes but introduce it for violating laws and customs of war committed in conjunction with premeditated murder.[47]

Throughout the year, individual members of Russia's lower (Duma) and upper houses of parliament – but also the Minister of Internal Affairs, Vladimir Kolokoltsev, in a "personal opinion" – called for a re-instatement of the death penalty, especially in the aftermath of high-profile crimes involving the murder of children and the bombing attacks in Volgograd in October and December. But others, such as Russian ombudsman Vladimir Lukin, the Speaker of the lower house Sergey Naryshkin, and the head of the Presidential Human Rights Council Mikhail Fedotov, dismissed the proposals. In April, Russian President Vladimir Putin questioned the effectiveness of the death penalty in actually reducing crime.[48] However, no step was taken to move from the formal moratorium on the death penalty, in place since 1996, to its legal abolition. As part of its Universal Periodic Review (UPR) conducted by the UN Human Rights Council in April, Russia expressed its opinion that the decision of the Constitutional Court in 2009 to extend the moratorium on the death penalty in essence finalized the legal ban on such punishment in Russia, but rejected recommendations to accede to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), aiming at the abolition of the death penalty.[49]

In Tajikistan, President Emomali Rahmon, in his annual address to parliament on 26 April, said that the abolition of the death penalty should be reviewed by the relevant authorities. This is believed to be the first time that he has mentioned the issue in parliament since the introduction of the official moratorium in 2004. Also in April, a national plan was adopted to implement the accepted UPR Recommendations, including the ratification of the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, in 2013-2014. In addition to the inter-departmental Working Group on the Study of the Socio-Legal Aspects of the Abolition of the Death Penalty set up in 2010, parliament in June established a Working Group on the Study of Public Opinion on the Death Penalty.

In December, the European Court of Human Rights of the Council of Europe held a public hearing in the case of Al-Nashiri v. Poland. The case concerns Poland's alleged complicity in Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri's secret detention in the country and eventual transfer to the US Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, despite a real risk that he would be subjected to the death penalty in a trial by military commission.[50]

On 22 April, the Foreign Affairs Council of the European Union (EU) adopted revised and updated EU Guidelines on the Death Penalty, first issued in 1998 and last revised in 2008, setting out how and when the EU is expected to act in this field.[51] The revised Guidelines, among other things, include increased calls for transparency and a commitment to ensure that actions such as legal, financial or other technical EU assistance to third countries do not contribute to the use of the death penalty. They explicitly state that the death penalty should never be imposed for drug-related offences and other "non-violent acts", such as financial or economic crimes.


Footnotes

42 "Belarusian Supreme Court Annuls Death Sentence In Murder Case", Radio Free Europe, 23 October 2013, http://www.rferl.org/content/belarus-capital-punishment-overturned-murder-case/25145575.html (accessed 4 March 2014).

43 ODIHR, "The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area: Background Paper 2013", p. 19, http://www.osce.org/odihr/106321 (accessed 4 March 2014).

44 The working group had been set up in 2010, but after a period of inactivity was re-established in December 2012.

45 http://www.penalreform.org/resource/belarusian-public-opinion-crime-punishment-including-death-penalty/ (accessed 4 March 2014).

46 "Belarus / Death penalty: UN expert calls to stop executions after recent court rulings", UN News Centre, 9 October 2013, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13840&LangID=E (accessed 4 March 2014).

47 In January 2014 proposed legislative amendments were reported that would reduce the number of capital crimes in the Criminal Code from 18 to 16, but retained for individuals, for example, found guilty of "plotting lethal terror acts"; First Deputy Prosecutor General Johan Merkel was quoted in these reports as opposing full abolition.

48 "Putin says no Stalinist tendencies in society, confirms Berezovsky's letters", RT, 25 April 2013, http://rt.com/politics/questions-annual-call-in-putins-376/ (accessed 4 March 2014).

49 Constitutional Court ruling, No. 1344-O-R of 19 November 2009.

50 Application no. 28761/11; Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists had jointly submitted written arguments as third party interveners in 2012 and 2013.

51 http://eeas.europa.eu/human_rights/guidelines/index_en.htm (accessed 4 March 2014).

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