How Belarus executes her criminals


The method of carrying out death sentences is officially a state secret in Belarus. That secret is not that secret anymore: the method was described in detail in the book ‘Shooters Team’ by Oleg Alkaev, who was the head of Minsk Pre-Trial Detention Centre № 1 at Vaładarskaha Street. In the Centre persons under sentence of death are kept; there death sentences are carried out. It is the head of the Pre-Trial Detention Centre who heads the ‘shooters team’. It means that Oleg Alkaev knows about the method more than anybody else in Belarus. After having escaped to the West he was granted asylum in Germany, so now he doesn’t have to be afraid of being prosecuted for the divulgence of the state secret.

‘“The shooters team” has the legal name “the task group for carrying death sentences into execution”. That’s what stands in the instructions from the Ministry of Internal Affairs that regulate that type of activity. Size and manning of the group are also dictated by the instructions and by the tasks that the group has. The group I was the head of consisted of thirteen men. Beside the direct participants of the process of exectuion it included a doctor and a representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The doctor’s functions were far from medical, he only certified executed persons’ deaths, while the representative of the MIA carried out the functions of supervision and registration. The main state supervisory authority over what the shooters team did was the public prosecutor appointed by the Prosecutor General of the Republic of Belarus. It is the prosecutor who is the main official functionary that controls administration of justice in strict accordance with the law. And only the prosecutor is not a member of the group for carrying death sentences into execution. All the other members of the group are picked out by its head, after which they are authorized by Minsk Chief Directorate of Internal Affairs (in former times) or by the MIA (now).

The assignment of duties for the members of the group is done by its leader. He selects no fewer than two executors of the sentence and no fewer than three professional drivers. I wanted the members of my group to be able to perform multiple functions, so that everyone could carry out any task including execution of the sentence. For obvious reasons I cannot disclose who was in the group and tell about every member of it. I’ll just say, that I emphatically avoided assigning any “supermen” to that unit.

I simply picked out able-bodied men with stable mental health and strong nerves. Normally the shooters team was manned by current employees of the Pre-Trial Detention Centre, but for safety it was permitted to engage other individuals.

During normal working hours all the members of the group performed their official duties. Upon receiving a signal from me they had to arrive without delay at the assembly point for the members of the special group. That was carried out in such a way, that a group member’s absence from the workplace looked naturally and didn’t arouse unnecessary suspicions among his coworkers. The members of the group arrived at the assembly point with their service weapon.

After the objective was assigned, one part of the team was taken to the place of execution in an automobile; there they were preparing the place for accomodation of persons sentenced to death. The second part of the team returned to the Pre-Trial Detention Centre and by documents obtained from me they organized taking persons sentenced to death out of the cell, getting them into an automobile and transporting them to the place of execution.

That was the most critical moment. Transportation of persons under sentence of death could prompt an attack on the transport for the purpose of setting them free. That’s why I told the route and the time of boarding the automobile only to those directly involved and only verbally.

Besides, measures were taken to make sure that the route remained unknown to the employees of the Pre-Trial Detention Centre, who were aware of the circumstances of the last stage of sentenced persons’ lives.

Nevertheless if the transport happened to be attacked, the members of the special group who convoyed persons sentenced to death, had the obligation to execute all the convoyed persons right on the spot in the automobile, after which they would have the right to leave the automobile.

After sentenced persons arrived at the place of execution, they were accomodated in a specially prepared cell under enhanced security. When an object has been prepared for being executed, in the special office (next to the room where executions of sentenced persons are carried out) the following people take their seats at a small writing desk: the public prosecutor, the head of the special group (the head of the Pre-Trial Detention Centre) and a representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. On the desk there are identification records of the sentenced persons.

The head of the group utters a surname, and the first sentenced person is taken to the office. As prescribed by the instructions, the prosecutor ask the man questions to clarify his personal information. After making sure that the man in front of him is the man whose identification record he is holding in his hands, the prosecutor declares that the man’s plea for mercy directed to the President of the Republic of Belarus was rejected and that his death sentence will be carried into exectuion. The sentenced person, being on the verge of utter madness, turns into a meek passive creature that hardly understands what is going on.

After the prosecutor’s last words the head of the special group signals his subordinates to “convoy” the sentenced person to execution. The man is blindfolded so that he would not have a sense of direction and taken to the next room, where an executor is waiting for him his pistol at the ready. After the exececutor gives a signal, two men make the sentenced person kneel in front of a bullet stopper, after which the executor shoots him in the back of his head.

The death is basically instantaneous. The execution procedure, from reading out the presidential decree rejecting the plea of mercy to the shot in the head, does not last longer than two minutes. That’s why I can say, that a sentenced person does not understand what is happening to him and that his death is sudden. Naturally, after he is told by the prosecutor that his plea for mercy was rejected, the man experiences acute stress, because he understands that he is going to be executed. But he thinks that will happen not now and not here, because he can see no apparent signs that would tell him that it will happen here and now. And that gives him hope that he will live a little longer. At least a day, at least an hour, at least five minutes, but he will live.

During the time of my work as the head of the Pre-Trial Detention Centre and the leader of the special group one hundred thirty four persons sentenced to death were executed. Only four of them understood that soon they would die, and left this life being able in mind, judging by their behaviour and ability to utter sense bearing words. And I fell under the impression that those people genuinely believed in God. They didn’t just read the Bible (over recent years nearly all convicts did that), they were true believers.

It may be difficult to believe that these words of mine are sincere, but I felt great aversion to the procedure of execution. I know, that that feeling was shared by nearly all the members of the special group. Employees who displayed any exaltation were immediately removed from the special group. I could not stand sadists. There were only two such creeps during the time of my work.

So, the execution has taken place. The doctor registers the biological death. The prosecutor, the head of the special group and the doctor sign the execution report (usually it is composed in advance). This report is the main accounting and reporting document used later to compose official documents for the court that imposed the sentence of death, and for the Agency of Civil Acts Registration Bureau so that it could issue a death certificate.

The execution report together with the burial report as well as other documents relative to the execution procedure are added to the executed person’s dentification record and handed over to the MIA Archive.

In one go three to five sentenced persons are usually executed, but individual executions are carried out as well. It depends on how the Presidential Commission on Pardons and, naturally, the President himself work. After execution the bodies of sentenced persons are put in bodybags and buried. I won’t elaborate on this, because the location of the burial is a state secret.

I’ll give an example of a device invented and applied by our Georgian colleagues when they had such a punitive measure as death sentence in their country. The sentenced person was laid down in a special room facedown, with his head over a special sewage runoff. The executor could not fire a precise shot to send the bullet through the cerebellum in that position. To make the executor’s job easier and to make sure the bullet would find its mark one of the members of the shooters team used a butterfly net to slightly raise the head of the person sentenced to death, after which the executor fired an aimed shot.

To return to what I was saying about the members of the special group, I’ll tell, that all of them deserve respect, because they do the most rough and thankless job in the world. By doing that they risk their image, public position and getting the medieval stigma “deathsman”, that has been long forgotten in normal societies.

Nevertheless they remain human, with strengths and weaknesses, with personal and domestic problems, with matrimonial difficulties and parental duties. In their everyday life they are very peaceful people. Many of them aren’t even able to use foul language or make a row. But if they receive an order, they will fulfill it thoroughly. On the outside those people are not in the slightest different from others. Nobody, not even close relatives, must know about their occupation. They may not give any indication of the special type of activity they take part in. They only have the right to carefully follow orders and keep their mouths shut’.

SHORT INTERVIEW WITH OLEG ALKAEV

P. S. The law says females cannot be sentenced to death. (Because patriarchy.)

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