Marieluise Beck, Member of the German Bundestag (Green Party) writes to me:
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I learned about the execution of Dmitrij Konovalev and Vladislav Kovalyev in Belarus last week. Shot in the nape of the neck. Only recently, I had met Vladislav’s mother for the first time. […] For eleven months now, Vladislav’s mother, Lyubov Kovalyeva, telephone operator from Vitebsk, Belarus, has been living in a nightmare. Her son, an electrician in Minsk, had been reported to the police by neighbours for public disturbance in the course of a nightly party and had been taken to the local police station. After a night of interrogation during which Vladislav was questioned under torture, Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenka had presented him on tv as having owned up to his part in the bombing of the Minsk subway of 11 April, 2011. He is alleged to have joined his accomplice Dmitrij in killing 15 and injuring more than 100 by placing a bomb in the subway on that day. Vladislav and Dmitrij were sentenced to death. Last Friday, Lyubov Kovalyeva found a dire note from the public prosecutor in her letterbox, telling her about her son’s execution. The exact date and the place burial were not made known to the family. The executed victim is not to be the only one who suffers. The system has also punishment for his relatives in store. They are not allowed a place for dignified mourning and commemoration.
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The proceedings against the two young men showed every trait of a show trial. For a long time, no attorney was found courageous enough to stand in for the defendants. The public prosecutor presented manipulated videos from surveillance cameras in the subway. […]
Immediately after the sentence, all alleged evidence was purposely destroyed.
Thomas Gatter 
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