Say NO to the death penalty in Belarus

Mikhail Hladki filed a supervisory appeal to Chair of the Minsk regional Court. There he expresses disagreement with the rulings of the Minsk District and Minsk Regional Court by which he is denied material and moral compensation for wrongful conviction under Part 1 st.139 Criminal Code, "murder".

M. Hladki considers incorrect the arguments of the courts that his confessions are self-incrimination, because bona-fide mistake of a person in the criminal nature of his actions or their consequences cannot be regarded as self-incrimination. By their decisions, Minsk District and Minsk Regional Court deprive the illegally imprisoned of compensation for mistakes of the investigation and the court and equate errors of the accused man to self-incrimination.

"The main reasons for this conviction was the incompleteness of the preliminary investigation and its inadequate quality, failure to implement all possible investigative actions, incorrect assessment of the evidence collected; shortcomings in the prosecutor's supervision over the implementation of laws in the course of the preliminary investigation of crimes and inadequate performance of legal requirements. All of this led to the imposition of the illegal sentence,” writes the plaintiff in his appeal.

In this regard, Mikhail Hladki asks to issue protest to the Presidium of Minsk Regional Court for canceling the verdicts of the Minsk District Court and the Minsk Regional Court and sending the case to a new trial.

Let us remind that in 2003 Mikhail Hladki was sentenced to 8 years in prison for the murder of his brother Viktar. At the time he pleaded guilty, honestly believing that the crime had been committed by hum. In 2012 the verdict was reversed due to the absence of corpus delicti in his actions, after Eduarl Lykau had been sentenced to death for several killings, including that of Viktar Hladki. Mikhail, in his turn, appealed to the Minsk District Court, demanding compensation for the financial and moral damages. Human Rights Center “Viasna” helps him defend his rights within the framework of the campaign “Human Rights Defenders against Death Penalty in Belarus”.