Two ‘evil’ estate agents who killed six vulnerable people after conning them into giving up their homes have been executed.
Prosecutors in Belarus say the gang – consisting of two men and one woman – buried their victims alive.
Death row inmates Igor Gershankov, 37, and Semyon Berezhnov, 32, were ordered to kneel then shot in the back of the head with a pistol by a state executioner in a Minsk jail, say sources.
Belarus is the only country in Europe that still allows executions.
Hardline president Alexander Lukashenko – who has ruled Belarus for almost a quarter of a century – refused to pardon the pair.
Gershankov’s wife Tatiana, mother of the couple’s two underage children, was sentenced to 24 years.
She avoided a death sentence because the country – described as the “last dictatorship” in Europe – does not execute women.
Their families were not informed in advance that the men would be killed nor permitted a final meeting.
It is unclear exactly when the executions were carried out as the authorities routinely do not give details.
A fourth member of the gang of “black estate agents” named as Boris Kolyosnikov, 22, was jailed for 22 years.
The group were convicted of persuading six lonely "alcoholics" who lived on their own in Mogilyov region to swap their flats for smaller apartments and a cash sum.
They were shown their ‘new homes’ – in reality a flat the “evil” estate agents had rented for a day – and signed over their old residence to a gang member.
The estate agents offered them vodka to celebrate completing the deal, but the shots were spiked with medication Clonidine to make them drowsy.
Then they were taken to “abandoned places” and killed – or in several cases, according to police, were buried alive.
Three empty graves had been prepared for “future victims”, a court heard.
The death sentence verdicts were upheld by Belarus Supreme Court on December 20 last year but have taken nearly a year to be carried out.
The men filed appeals to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, but appear to have been executed before the due process had completed.
They had claimed confessions were “forcibly” extracted from them.
Executions are said to be carried out at a jail known as SIZO No 1 in Minsk.
The former head of the facility Oleg Alkaev said that on occasions he had to take two or three shots if the doctor present recorded a heart beat after the first bullet.
The method of execution is similar to that used in Soviet times under Stalin.
In June it was reported that the Supreme Court had suspended the implementation of the death sentences on the pair amid calls by rights organisations not to execute the men.
But Gershankov’s mother “received confirmation that the sentence was carried out from the Mogilyov regional court on November 28,” said human rights group Vesna.
Earlier in a court hearing footage shows a tearful Tatiana Gershankova pleading from a court cage surrounded by armed police: “I have two children. I am not responsible for these crimes. Why me?”
In 2016 Belarus carried out four death sentences, while in 2017 courts ordered five death sentences.
According to human rights activists, two of them were carried out.
Longtime strongman Lukashenko, a 64-year-old former collective farmer, is known to have pardoned only one death row inmate.
The EU, the OSCE and a strong of international organisations have condemned the death penalty in Belarus.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee said this month that the death penalty "continues to be imposed and enforced" and the country has not complied with its requests for a delay in sentencing or execution in six recent cases.
It also condemned the practice of not informing relatives of the date execution and not allowing them to bury the body as "traumatic" and "inhumane treatment.”
This month Amnesty International said only action by Lukashenko could ban the death penalty in Belarus.
There have been suggestions a referendum should be held but a spokeswoman for the organisation said: "As history shows, a majority of the population are in favour of retaining the death penalty.”
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