Four people were sentenced to death in Belarus in 2002,...

Four people were sentenced to death in Belarus in 2002, but no one was executed, Belarussian Deputy Interior Minister and head of the Investigation Committee Leonid Glukhovsky said at a joint seminar of the Belarus National Assembly and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). "Last year, twenty-one were sentenced to alternative punishment, including life in prison. So the republic is slowly progressing towards abolition of the death penalty," he said. Public feelings and the present crime rate impede the abolition of the death penalty, Glukhovsky said. Valery Lipkin, head of the Parliament Commission on Human Rights, Inter-Ethnic Relations and Media, noted in his report that 88% of those who participated in the 1996 referendum objected to abolishing the death penalty in Belarus. However, the referendum results were just a recommendation and could not be regarded as a legal limit on the moratorium on the death penalty, he said.