Method
Before execution, all prisoners on death row are transferred to Minsk Detention Center No. 1 (СИЗО, or SIZO No. 1), located in the capital city of Minsk. The method used to carry out the sentence is execution by shooting. The executioner is a member of the "Committee for the execution of sentences," which also chooses the area where the execution will take place. After the sentence is carried out, a prison doctor and other prison officials certify that the execution has been carried out, and a death certificate is prepared. The remains of the condemned are buried secretly, and the family is notified that the execution took place. Col. Oleg Alkayev, who was a director of SIZO No. 1, claimed that about 130 executions took place at the prison between December 1996 and May 2001, when he left Belarus to live in exile in Berlin, Germany.
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 effect of intimidating or punishing families by intentionally leaving them in a state of uncertainty and mental distress… 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 . | ” |
Read more about this topic: Capital Punishment In Belarus
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