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Secretary general of Council of Europe calls for moratorium on executions in Belarus

Thorbjorn Jagland, secretary general of the Council of Europe, on Thursday expressed dismay over the second execution of a convict in Belarus since the beginning of this year and urged the Belarusian authorities to impose a moratorium on executions.

"I urge Belarus to adopt a formal moratorium on executions as a first step towards abolition of the death penalty," he said. "This would be an important step to bring Belarus closer to the Council of Europe and its values."

He recalled that the death penalty is contrary to the fundamental rights upheld by the Council of Europe.

In a joint statement on the same day, Andrea Rigoni, the rapporteur on the situation in Belarus in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), and Marietta Karamanli, PACE's rapporteur on abolition of the death penalty, warned, "Belarus’s efforts to move closer to the Parliamentary Assembly will remain vain and fruitless as long as the death penalty is imposed on any Belarusian citizen."

"Murder and capital punishment will never be opposites that cancel one another out. When the state itself kills, the maxim ‘thou shalt not kill’ loses the force of the absolute and its status as a fundamental human right is undermined. This is and will remain non-negotiable for our Assembly,” said the statement.

The 45-year-old Ryhor (Hryhoriy) Yuzepchuk, a Roma man born in Ukraine’s Zhytomyr province who had earlier been convicted of killing three people, was sentenced to death on April 24, 2013. The Supreme Court rejected his appeal last August.

The execution of Mr. Yuzepchuk was reported on May 12 by a human rights organization called Vyasna with reference to the Mahilyow Regional Court. Human rights defenders believe that he might have been executed together 23-year-old Pavel Selyun. The double murder convict’s lawyer was told about his death on April 18. Mr. Selyun’s family so far has not been officially notified that he has been executed. //BelaPAN