Amnesty International has urged the Belarusian President Aliaksandr Lukashenka to grant clemency to a man who may be facing imminent execution. 

Vasil Yuzepchuk who allegedly mudrered 6 women in Brest may have an intellectual disability, his lawyer stated. 

He has alleged that he was beaten while in pre-trial detention on two separate occasions in January and in March.

According to Amnesty Internatinal, "by granting clemency to Vasil Yuzepchuk, President Lukashenka will make good declarations that Belarus is ready to declare a moratorium on the death penalty and make Europe a death penalty free zone".

“The Belarusian authorities must also immediately declare moratorium on all executions and death sentences. They must commute without delay the sentences of all prisoners currently on death row to terms of imprisonment,” said Heather McGill, Amnesty International’s expert on Belarus.

He added that only one request for clemency has been granted since President Lukashenka came to power in 1994.

The appeal comes on the eve of World Day against Death Penalty when activists will call on the authorities of Belarus — the only country in Europe and Central Asia still applying capital punishment — to abolish it.

Protests forbidden
On the eve of World Day against Death Penalty (10 October) the actions against the capital punishment in different towns in Belarus were forbidden by the authorities.

Despite all, some youth activists and human rights defenders expressed their protest, distributing postcards of the international human rights organization ‘Amnesty International’ and a special issue of the Naša Prava bulletin in the town of Navapolack (North Belarus). 

Some of them were detained by police. The police officers tried to make the detainees give explanations concerning the materials they were distributing. The activists were released after an hour without being given any charges.

Society ‘ready for discussing death penalty’
“We see that the number of death penalty sentences has recently reduced in Belarus. The authorities have initiated the debates on imposing a ban on the death penalty; a working group has been set up in the parliament to examine the issue,” said the Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of Sweden to Belarus Stefan Eriksson.

On  12 October the Swedish presidency and the Office of the European Commission in Minsk held a press conference about the situation with the death penalty in Belarus.

The Swedish ambassador Stefan Eriksson argues, that the European Union welcomes these steps in Belarus and hopes that the debates will have an impact, and a ban on the death penalty will be imposed eventually.

“But as long as the capital punishment is used in Belarus, we will be raising this issue in the hope that the authorities will change their mind,” he said. The Ambassador stressed that nobody can make Belarus or any other state using the death penalty take a decision on the ban.

"Torture and ill-treatment used"
According to Amnesty International, in Belarus the use of the Death Penalty is compounded by a flawed criminal justice system that administers capital punishment in a manner that violates international laws and standards pertaining to the death penalty. There is credible evidence that torture and ill-treatment are used to extract “confessions”.

Condemned prisoners are given no warning that they are about to be executed, and they are usually executed within minutes of being told that their appeal for clemency has been rejected.

They are taken first to one room, where, in the presence of the Director of the detention facility, the Prosecutor and one other Ministry of Interior employee, they are told that their appeal for clemency had been turned down and that the sentence will be carried out. They are then taken to a neighbouring room where they are forced to their knees and shot in the back of the head.

Their families will only be informed days or sometimes weeks after the execution that their relative has been executed.