Supreme Court: cases concerning execution of death penalty are beyond our jurisdiction

Volha Hrunova, the mother of the executed Homel resident Aliaksandr Hrunou, has received a reply from the Supreme Court to her supervisory appeal. The woman has been trying to achieve a change in the legislation which currently prohibits informing the relatives of the executed about the place of their burial or issue their bodies. As it follows from the answer, Volha Hrunova has been denied in bringing a civic case against the Homel Regioonal Court and the Department of Corrections.

This time, the deputy chairman of the Supreme Court Andrei Zabara told the woman that "the procedure for the enforcement of the death penalty is regulated by a peremptory norms of PEC of the Republic of Belarus, whose challenging is impossible in civil proceedings. As far as you appeal the actions of agencies associated with the implementation of the sentence of the death penalty, Judge rightly refused to institute civil proceedings in connection with lack of jurisdiction".

Let us remind that after the refusal to declassify the burial place of her son the woman has started a strategic litigation with the assistance of human rights activists with the aim to achieve changes in the legislation and the practice of its implementation, which every time leads to the suffering of parents and relatives of executed death row convicts in Belarus.

"It's hard to understand why actual torture is still used in our country. Why can't a mother know where her son is buried? Why are we unable to come to the grave of a loved one? Is this generosity and humanity, when, after the enforcement of the death penalty, the family and relatives of the executed cannot bury him in accordance with religious beliefs and customs, even if his a murdered?" repeats the grievous woman.

Aliaksandr Hrunou was executed by shooting on October 22, 2014 for killing a female acquaintance. He managed to register a complaint with the UN Committee on Human Rights. His mother, Volha Hrunova, has appealed to the Human Rights Committee with a complaint about ill-treatment by the State.

Homel Spring