Henadz Yakavitski Appeals against Death Sentence
On January 20, the resident of Vileyka Henadz Yakavitski lodged a cassational appeal to the Supreme Court against the death sentence rendered on January 5 by the Minsk Regional Court.
The man was charged with “murder committed with extreme cruelty” (Article 139 of the Criminal Code). According to the prosecution, he killed his cohabitee in July 2015.
Coordinator of the campaign Human Rights Defenders against Death Penalty Andrei Paluda emphasized that the cassational appeal is the only effective available legal remedy on the national level.
“As a rule, other procedures of supervision or appeal for pardon to the President turn to be ineffective. It should be reminded that, according to the information we have, only once the President granted pardon to a person sentenced to capital punishment.”
Henadz Yakavitski was born in 1967 in Georgia where his father served a military service and mother was a nurse. The family then moved to Belarus, to the father’s homeland. Henadz Yakavitski was first time convicted at the age of 17: he was sentenced to three years deprivation of liberty for that he and his friend took away a bottle of alcohol from a drunk passer-by. In 1989, Yakavitski was sentenced to death, which later was mitigated to 15 years in prison.
On January 5, 2016 Henadz Yakavitski, having a murder and evasion of paying alimony in his criminal record, was found guilty of a murder with extreme cruelty. Based on p.6 and p. 12 of part 2 of article 139 of the Criminal Code), he was sentenced to capital punishment. Based on part 3 of article 174 of the Criminal Code, with reference to part 2 of art. 65 of the Criminal Code, he was sentenced to deprivation of liberty for a year and ten months. The final sentence was punishment by death (by means of shooting).
