Belarus is the only country in Europe that continues to apply capital punishment.
The authoritarian leader of Belarus granted on Tuesday the pardon for a German citizen sentenced to death after being accused of terrorism. It was not immediately clear whether the president’s decision Alexander Lukashenko It means that Rico Krieger’s death sentence will simply be replaced by life imprisonment, as is usually done in Belarus in these cases, or he will be released.
He German Foreign Ministry confirmed that Krieger had been pardoned and said that “this news is A relief“, but did not give more details.
Krieger has been in custody since his arrest in October 2023. Belarusian state media reported that he is accused of to photograph some country’s military facilities and to stage a burst at a railway station by order of the Ukrainian special services.
Belarus is the only country in Europe that applies the capital punishment.
A new hope
Early on Tuesday, Lukashenko called a meeting to discuss the appeal of Krieger, sentenced to death in June. Krieger’s lawyer, Vladimir Gorbach, who participated in the meeting, told Belarusian state television that Lukashenko said he would study Krieger’s request for clemency and announce his decision later.
The Belarusian Foreign Ministry has said it has been in contact with German officials about Krieger’s fate and says it has “proposed specific solutions to the existing options for the development of the situation”.
The German Foreign Ministry has stated that its government is concerned about the case and has been providing the man consular support. He has not yet given more details.
Los human rights activists They noted that the accusations against Krieger come amid a relentless political repression in Belarus. More of 35.000 personas have been detained and thousands beaten in police custody in a brutal repression of the protests sparked by Lukashenko’s re-election in a presidential election held in August 2020 that the opposition considered a farce.
Pavel Sapelka of the Belarusian human rights group Viasna said Krieger could have been victim of a provocation by the main Belarusian security agencywhich still goes by the Soviet name of KGB, and noted that some Belarusians have been convicted for their comments in messenger chats created by KGB agents posing as Ukrainians.
Krieger’s conviction has sparked speculations on possibility that Belarusian authorities have acted in concert with Russian spy agencieseager to prepare a possible swap involving Vadim Krasikov, a Russian serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 murder in Berlin of a Georgian citizen of Chechen descent.
Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to hint at an exchange involving Krasikov when asked about the possibility of freeing the Wall Street Journal journalist. Evan Gershkovich. This same month, Gershkovich was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in maximum security prison by espionage charges which both he and his employer and the US Government have branded as invented.
