Updated at 17:53,27-03-2024

Rights group says convict executed in Belarus

RFE/RL

Authorities in Belarus, the only country in Europe that practices capital punishment, has reportedly executed a sentenced to death on a murder conviction.

The unregistered Vyasna (Spring) human rights center in Minsk said on November 4 that Alyaksandr Hrunou, who was sentenced last year after being convictyed of stabbing a woman a woman to death in 2012, had been executed.

Vyasna cited Hrunou's mother as saying that she had received her son's belongings, including clothes he wore in a death row cell, by mail.

Vyasna also said it learned on November 3 that Hrunou's appeal for clemency was denied in early October.

Relatives of people executed in Belarus are rarely informed officially and are not told what has been done with the body.

Belarus is known to have executed two other convicts this year.

Vyasna says five people were executed in Belarus from 2010 to 2012 and at least one person remains on death row.