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Communist Vietnam's secret death penalty conveyor belt: How country trails only China and Iran for 'astonishing' number of executions

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Prisoners are dragged from their cells at 4am without warning to be given a lethal injection Vietnam's use of the death penalty has been thrust into the spotlight after a real estate tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to be executed in one of the biggest corruption cases in the country's history. Truong My Lan, a businesswoman who chaired a sprawling company that developed luxury apartments, hotels, offices and shopping malls, was arrested in 2022.

Belarus: Triple Murderer Sentenced to Death

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Minsk, Belarus
Minsk, Belarus
February 16, 2016: Belarus sentenced to death a man convicted of killing three people, the day after the European Union (EU) announced it was lifting sanctions against the ex-Soviet country for an improved human rights record.

It was the third death penalty handed down in Belarus since November 2015.

The 32-year-old man, whose name was not released, was sentenced by a court in Minsk which had found him guilty of five crimes including the three murders, announced Yulia Liaskova, spokeswoman for the Belarusian high court.

These crimes were "committed with particular cruelty," she said.

The two other recent death sentence cases in Belarus were in January when Gennadi Yakovitsky, 49, was convicted of killing his companion and in November, when Ivan Kulesh, 29, was found guilty of killing three saleswomen.

The latest death sentence came after EU foreign ministers agreed on November 15 to lift nearly all sanctions on Belarus, including against strongman President Alexander Lukashenko, after improvements in the country's human rights record.

EU foreign affairs head Federica Mogherini said that Belarus was "showing a positive trend which we want to encourage."

At the same time the European Union is opposed to capital punishment and abolishing the death penalty is a pre-condition for a country becoming a member of the bloc.

More than 400 people have been condemned to death in Belarus since the 1990s, according to estimates by human rights groups. 

Source: Agence France-Presse, Feb. 17, 2016

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Location: Minsk, Belarus
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