Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, the Kremlin’s main ally in Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, passed a law on Thursday making high treason by state officials punishable by death.
The purpose of this law is to amend the Penal Code to “harden” the prosecution of extremist, terrorist and anti-government crimes. released the presidential advisory on the social network Telegram.
The amendment allows the death penalty to be applied to officials at all levels of public administration in this former Soviet republic,
According to the authors, the law is a “preventive measure”, which was adopted precisely when Belarus deepened its integration with Russia, within the framework of the State Union.
Belarus is the only country in Europe that still applies the death penalty and has therefore never been a member of the Council of Europe, from which Russia was expelled last year.
A Minsk court recently sentenced exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tijanovskaya in absentia to 15 years in prison for conspiring to seize power by unconstitutional means.
For the same crime, the former culture minister Pavel Latushko was sentenced to 18 years and, in another case, Belarusian justice sentenced Nobel Peace Prize human rights activist Alés Bialiatski to ten years in prison.
Source: DN
