BELARUS. DEATH SENTENCE AGAINST POLICEMAN CARRIED OUT
November 28, 2007: a police officer turned serial killer was executed, the Supreme Court of Belarus announced. The execution was carried out by shooting, according to the court.
Alyaksandr Syarheychyk, 37, a company chief with the Hrodna district office of the interior ministry's Guard Department, was sentenced to death by the Supreme Court on May 22.
He was convicted of six murders, although he had confessed to having killed 12 people, 11 women and one man, between 1992 and 2006.
The court found that there was not sufficient evidence to prove the other six murders.
The policeman allegedly invited young women to join him for recreation on the landscape and then choked them to death and burned or sank the bodies.
"He could not live without killing," commented Alyaksandr Nawrodski, an investigator with the Prosecutor General's Office.
The man's nephew was found to be complicit and sentenced to 10 years in prison. The case had been tried by a Supreme Court panel behind closed doors in the building of the Hrodna Regional Court since February 20. (Sources: BelaPAN, 28/11/2007; Interfax, 28/11/2007)
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