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Capital Punishment In Belarus
Belarus is the only country in Europe that continues to carry out the death penalty. As of early 2025, capital punishment remains a legal penalty, with at least one execution confirmed in 2022 and a death sentence issued in 2024. The death penalty has been part of Belarus's legal system since its independence from the Soviet Union on August 25, 1991. The current national constitution permits the death penalty for "especially grave crimes." The list of capital offenses was expanded in 2023 to include high treason. A 1996 referendum on the issue saw 80.44% of voters support retaining the punishment; the Belarusian government consequently contends that the death penalty can only be abolished via another nationwide vote. Its continued use has drawn widespread condemnation from international organizations, including the United Nations, which criticize both the practice itself and the methods employed. The application of capital punishment is one of the main reasons for Belarus's ex ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Retroactive Law
An ''ex post facto'' law is a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences or status of actions that were committed, or relationships that existed, before the enactment of the law. In criminal law, it may criminalize actions that were legal when committed; it may aggravate a crime by bringing it into a more severe category than it was in when it was committed; it may change the punishment prescribed for a crime, as by adding new penalties or extending sentences; it may extend the statute of limitations; or it may alter the rules of evidence in order to make conviction for a crime likelier than it would have been when the deed was committed. Conversely, a form of ''ex post facto law'' called an amnesty law may decriminalize certain acts. Alternatively, rather than redefining the relevant acts as non-criminal, it may simply prohibit prosecution; or it may enact that there is to be no punishment, but leave the underlying conviction technically unaltered. A pardon has a sim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aggravated Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse committed with the necessary intention as defined by the law in a specific jurisdiction. ("The killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the crime of killing a person with malice aforethought or with recklessness manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life.") This state of mind may, depending upon the jurisdiction, distinguish murder from other forms of unlawful homicide, such as manslaughter. Manslaughter is killing committed in the absence of ''malice'',This is "malice" in a technical legal sense, not the more usual English sense denoting an emotional state. See malice (law). such as in the case of voluntary manslaughter brought about by reasonable provocation, or diminished capacity. ''Involuntary'' manslaughter, where it is recognized, is a killing that lacks all but the most attenuated guilty intent, recklessness. Most societies consi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
War Crimes
A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostages, unnecessarily destroying civilian property, deception by perfidy, wartime sexual violence, pillaging, and for any individual that is part of the command structure who orders any attempt to committing mass killings (including genocide or ethnic cleansing), the granting of no quarter despite surrender, the conscription of children in the military, and flouting the legal distinctions of proportionality and military necessity. The formal concept of war crimes emerged from the codification of the customary international law that applied to warfare between sovereign states, such as the Lieber Code (1863) of the Union Army in the American Civil War and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 for international war. In the afterm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Weapons Of Mass Destruction
A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a Biological agent, biological, chemical weapon, chemical, Radiological weapon, radiological, nuclear weapon, nuclear, or any other weapon that can kill or significantly harm many people or cause great damage to Artificiality, artificial structures (e.g., buildings), Nature, natural structures (e.g., Mountain, mountains), or the biosphere. The scope and usage of the term has evolved and been disputed, often signifying more politically than technically. Originally coined in reference to strategic bombing, aerial bombing with Explosive material#Chemical, chemical explosives during World War II, it has later come to refer to large-scale weaponry of warfare-related technologies, such as Biological warfare, biological, chemical warfare, chemical, Radiological warfare, radiological, or nuclear warfare. Early usage The first use of the term "weapon of mass destruction" on record is by Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1937 in refere ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crimes Against Humanity
Crimes against humanity are certain serious crimes committed as part of a large-scale attack against civilians. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity can be committed during both peace and war and against a state's own nationals as well as foreign nationals.Margaret M. DeGuzma"Crimes Against Humanity"''Research Handbook on International Criminal Law'', Bartram S. Brown, ed., Edgar Elgar Publishing, 2011. Together with war crimes, genocide, and the crime of aggression, crimes against humanity are one of the core crimes of international criminal law and, like other crimes against international law, have no temporal or jurisdictional limitations on prosecution (where universal jurisdiction is recognized). The first prosecution for crimes against humanity took place during the Nuremberg trials against defeated leaders of Nazi Germany. Crimes against humanity have been prosecuted by other international courts (such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugosl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genocide
Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by means such as "the disintegration of [its] political and social institutions, of [its] cultural genocide, culture, linguicide, language, national feelings, religious persecution, religion, and [its] economic existence". During the struggle to ratify the Genocide Convention, powerful countries restricted Lemkin's definition to exclude their own actions from being classified as genocide, ultimately limiting it to any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". While there are many scholarly Genocide definitions, definitions of genocide, almost all international bodies of law officially adjudicate the crime of genocide pursuant to the Genocide Convention. Genocide has ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terrorism
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war against non-combatants. There are various different definitions of terrorism, with no universal agreement about it. Different definitions of terrorism emphasize its randomness, its aim to instill fear, and its broader impact beyond its immediate victims. Modern terrorism, evolving from earlier iterations, employs various tactics to pursue political goals, often leveraging fear as a strategic tool to influence decision makers. By targeting densely populated public areas such as transportation hubs, airports, shopping centers, tourist attractions, and nightlife venues, terrorists aim to instill widespread insecurity, prompting Public policy, policy changes through Manipulation (psychology), psychological manipulation and undermining confidence ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Protection Of Diplomats Convention
The Protection of Diplomats Convention (formally, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Internationally Protected Persons, Including Diplomatic Agents) is a United Nations anti-terrorism treaty that codifies some of the traditional principles on the necessity of protecting diplomats. Adoption The convention was adopted as a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly on 14 December 1973 in response to a series of kidnappings and murders of diplomatic agents, beginning in the 1960s. It was drafted by the International Law Commission (ILC), which began work on it in 1971. It was adopted within two years, which was exceptionally fast by ILC standards. Content Parties to the convention agree to criminalize the commission of murders or kidnappings of internationally protected persons as well as violent attacks against the official premises, private accommodation, or means of transport of such persons. Parties to the convention also agree to crimina ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
War Of Aggression
A war of aggression, sometimes also war of conquest, is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense, usually for territorial gain and subjugation, in contrast with the concept of a just war. Wars without international legality (i.e. not out of self-defense nor sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council) can be considered wars of aggression; however, this alone usually does not constitute the definition of a war of aggression; certain wars may be unlawful but not aggressive (a war to settle a boundary dispute where the initiator has a reasonable claim, and limited aims, is one example). In the judgment of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, which followed World War II, "War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Criminal Code Of Belarus
The Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus ( — КК РБ K RB — УК РБ K RB contains the fundamental laws to announce what is considered illegal to perform inside Belarus. Passed in 1999, several of these laws were carried over from laws passed in 1960 as the Byelorussian SSR. In the 1999 edition, the Criminal code contains passages of crimes that can be issued capital punishment upon sentencing. As of 2022, court cases in Belarus are often scheduled ten minutes apart from one another and can conclude in as little three minutes, and have been criticized for being "not a court". Consistently from 2016 through 2020, trials of criminal cases resulting in a guilty verdict occurred at a frequency of 99.7% and 99.8%. See also * Administrative Code of Belarus *Show trial * Okrestina * Prison Number 8 References Belarus criminal law Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Verdict
In law, a verdict is the formal finding of fact made by a jury on matters or questions submitted to the jury by a judge. In a bench trial, the judge's decision near the end of the trial is simply referred to as a finding. In England and Wales, a coroner's findings used to be called verdicts but are, since 2009, called conclusions (see ). Etymology The term "verdict", from the Latin ''veredictum'', literally means "to say the truth" and is derived from Middle English ''verdit'', from Anglo-Norman: a compound of ''ver'' ("true", from the Latin ''vērus'') and ''dit'' ("speech", from the Latin ''dictum'', the neuter past participle of ''dīcere'', to say). Criminal law In a criminal case, the verdict, either "not guilty" or "guilty"—except in Scotland where the verdict of " not proven" is also available—is handed down by the jury. Different counts in the same case may have different verdicts. A verdict of guilty in a criminal case generally requires evidence to be tes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
