Minsk subway bomber reportedly executed

One of the men convicted of the April 2011 Minsk subway bombing has been executed. Although his death has not been independently verified, a member of his family allegedly received a letter from the Belarusian court confirming the execution.

The letter that arrived at Vladislav Kovalev’s family home in the city of Vitebsk had been signed by the deputy chairman of the Supreme Court.

I have received a note from the Supreme Court dated March 16 saying the verdict has been implemented. I think he had already been shot on March 15,” Kovalev’s mother told Itar-Tass news agency on Saturday.

Tatyana Kozyar, Kovalev’s sister, uploaded a copy of the letter to the Russian social networking site Vkontakte with the caption “They’ve killed Vlad.

Dmitry Konovalov appears to have been executed as well, says the leading Belarusian news website TUT.  However, the site provided no further details.

The two convicted parties, Dmitry Konovalov and Vladislav Kovalev, had been refused clemency by Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, as the state media reported on March 14. The desicion came despite Kovalev filing an official plea to Lukashenko to pardon him.

A court ruling for the April 11 terrorist attack, which killed 15 people and injured more than 200 people in the Minsk subway, was rendered in November 2011.

Konovalov was found guilty of perpetrating the blast. He was also convicted of a previous July 2008 Independence Day bombing in Minsk, as well as terror attacks carried out in Vitebsk in September 2005. He pleaded guilty to all of the charges, except the Vitebsk incident.

At the same time, Kovalev was convicted of delivering the explosive device and assisting in detonating it. The court also said Kovalev had been aware of Konovalov’s long standing terror activities, but never reported him to the police.

Unlike Konovalov, Kovalev denied the charges. He said prosecutors had extracted his initial confession through coercion. His mother is still convinced Kovalev was not involved in the terror attack on the Minsk subway.

Defense lawyers and human rights activists say the ruling was based on trivial and inconclusive evidence. Western governments have been urging Lukashenko to call off the execution, as Belarus remains the sole European country to still use the death penalty. But during the 20 years of his rule, Lukashenko pardoned only one person.

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