There are very few countries in the world that still use the death penalty as a legal sanction. In fact, Belarus is the only country in all of Europe that still applies itregardless of the fact that the European Union has abolished it in the European Convention on Human Rights.
The penalty has been in force since the country gained independence from the Soviet Union in August 1991. According to the National Constitution of Belarus, “the death penalty may be applied in accordance with the law as an exceptional penalty for especially serious crimes and only in accordance with the verdict of a court of law.”
Belarus: in which cases the death penalty applies in 2025
According to the Belarus Criminal Codethe causes for which a person can be sentenced to death are:
Belarus: what are the death sentences like?
In Belarus, executions are carried out by firing squad. Once prisoners receive their sentence, they are transferred to Minsk Detention Center No. 1, based at Pischalauski Castle. according to the book The Death Squad by Oleg Alkayev, on the day of the execution of a condemned man, he is taken to a secret place, where his eyes are blindfolded and is locked in a nearby room, where two staff members force him to his knees.
The executioner is part of the sentence execution committee. This uses a PB-9 pistol with a silencer and shoot the prisoner in the back of the head. According to the book, the entire process takes no more than two minutes. Afterwards, a prison doctor and other officials observe the body to confirm that the execution was successful and bury the body in a secret location. Finally, the family is notified of what happened.
To date, the last death penalty murder in Belarus was in 2019. However, the exact numbers of how many executions there were in total are not known because the last official data was published in 2006. However, the Belarusian Private News Agency (BelaPAN) reported that they registered 278 executions between 1992 and 2010.
Source: Ambito
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