Minsk (dpa) – One of the men convicted of carrying out a bombing attack on the Minsk metro last year has been executed, an independent Belarus news agency reported Saturday, quoting the man's mother. The mother, Lyubov Kovaleva, told the Belapan agency she had received a letter from the supreme court informing her that her son, Vladislav Kovalev, 26, had been executed. There was no official confirmation of the execution, and the fate of the second man, Dmitry Konovalov, 26, remained unclear. On Thursday, President Aleksandr Lukashenko rejected final appeals for clemency, despite criticism of the way the trial was handled and opposition across Europe to the death penalty. On Friday, Germany put in an official appeal to stay the executions. Konovalov and Kovalev were found guilty of setting off a nail bomb in a metro station on April 11 last year. Fifteen people died and around 200 were injured. They were also found to have carried out bombing attacks in 2005 and 2008 that injured dozens. Prosecutors argued that the pair's main motivation was a desire to set themselves above the law. Kovalev initially confessed but later withdrew his confession, saying it was extracted under duress. They were sentenced to death in November. By law, executions in Belarus – the only European country to retain the death penalty – are carried out with a shot to the back of the head. Belarus executed two convicts in 2011, according to data published by Amnesty International. Some 400 executions have been carried out in the country since 1991, according to the human rights organization. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/rFbJv Tags: Belarus, Bombing, Execution, Metro, Minsk Section: Eastern Europe, Europe, Human Rights, Latest News
