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Lukashenka speaks in support of death penalty in Belarus

The death penalty is not good but it should be used, Alyaksandr Lukashenka told a group of Russian reporters in Minsk on Friday.

"It is applied in our country because there are such processes where capital punishment should be used," the Belarusian leader said.

He pointed to the subway bombing in Minsk in April 2011 as an example. "Do they [bombers] have the right to live if people died in that subway?" he wondered.

Mr. Lukashenka described capital punishment as one of the measures taken by the Belarusian authorities to ensure security.

Speaking about the government's fight against crime, Mr. Lukashenka recalled controversial measures used in the 1990s to eradicate attacks targeting the drivers of expensive cars on the Moscow-Minsk highway.

According to Mr. Lukashenka, he ordered a crackdown on gangsters who engaged in carjackings and often murdered drivers. "Those gangsters who offered resistance [to police] were shot dead at the scene. Three such groups were destroyed and there was no fourth one," he said.

"Gangsters can understand only their own language," he said. //BelaPAN