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Death row inmate executed in Belarus

Pavel Selyun has been executed, the Vyasna Human Rights Center reported on Friday with reference to the double murder convict’s lawyer.

According to the report, when the lawyer came to the prison for a meeting with her client, she was told that “Selyun is out under the sentence,” which means that he has been executed.

The mother of the 23-year-old convict had not been notified of either the pardon commission’s decision or the date of the execution and hoped to be allowed to meet her son soon, the Vyasna Human Rights Center said.

The Center also noted that Belarus violated its international commitments once again by executing a convict while his case was still pending before the UN Human Rights Committee.

Pavel Selyun, a resident of Vileyka, Minsk region, was sentenced to death by the Hrodna Regional Court on June 12, 2013. The Supreme Court of Belarus upheld the sentence on September 17.

The man is believed to have murdered his wife and her alleged lover out of jealousy on August 5, 2012.

The body of the 21-year-old woman with multiple stab wounds to her neck, back and stomach was discovered in an apartment in a multi-story apartment building in Hrodna two days later.

The dismembered body of the woman's alleged 23-year-old lover, who owned the apartment, was found in a garbage container outside the building shortly afterward.

The suspect was arrested on a Hrodna-Baranavichy train later on August 7. The head of the murdered man was allegedly found in his bag.

Last fall the mother of the convict appealed to Alyaksandr Lukashenka to spare the life of her son.

"While my son is still alive, I would like to appeal to you, Alyaksandr Ryhoravich, because the life of my son depends on you alone," Tamara Selyun told reporters in Minsk in October, during a news conference devoted to World Day Against the Death Penalty. "What was done cannot be undone, but the execution of my son by shooting would not bring anyone back from the dead."

The woman insisted that her son did not deserve to die. "He has never been a bandit, he has always been a kindest person," Ms. Selyun said, describing him as an excellent student and a well-read person who "had always dealt efficiently with tasks facing him." She expressed confidence that Mr. Lukashenka would see for himself that Pavel did not deserve death if he met the young man.

"My son made a mistake and deserves to be punished, but not like that," Ms. Selyun said. "I ask you, a reasonable and educated person, please do not make a decision in a hurry."

Ms. Selyun also sent a letter to Patriarchal Exarch Filaret, head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Belarus, asking him to help save her son.

The cleric replied that the Russian Orthodox Church in Belarus “works to end executions.”

"Christian moral education has formed a negative attitude to the death penalty in the minds of people," he said. "The abolition of the death penalty would provide more opportunities for pastoral work with those who fell and for their personal repentance."

Belarus is the only country in Europe and the post-Soviet region where the death sentence remains a sentencing option and prisoners are executed. The Belarusian authorities have preserved the death penalty for “premeditated, aggravated murder” and 12 other peacetime offenses.

In 2006, the government enacted an amendment to the Criminal Code, which indicated the temporary nature of the use of the death penalty in Belarus.

Executions in Belarus are carried out by a gunshot to the back of the head. Neither the condemned nor relatives are told of the scheduled date of the execution, and the relatives are not told where the body is buried.

According to human rights defenders, more than 400 people have been executed in Belarus in the last two decades. No one is known to have been executed in the country last year. At least three were executed in 2012, two in 2011, two in 2010, no one in 2009, at least four in 2008 and at least one in 2007. As many as 46 people were executed in the country in 1995, the same number in 1997 and 47 in 1998.