A German national has been sentenced to death in Belarus, the German foreign ministry has said, hours after a Belarusian human rights group said a German combat medic had been sentenced to death by firing squad.
The German ministry did not name its national but the Viasna Human Rights Centre said earlier on Friday that Rico Krieger, 30, had been convicted under six articles of Belarus’s criminal code in a trial held at the end of June. It said he had been in custody since November.
The exact allegations against Krieger were not immediately clear and Belarus’s official news agency did not report anything about his case.
The German ministry statement said: “The Foreign Office and the embassy in Minsk are giving the person in question consular support and are working intensively with Belarusian authorities on his behalf.”
Belarus’s justice ministry, which had not reported any such case, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The case may be linked to the Kastuś Kalinoŭski Regiment, a group of Belarusian volunteer fighters fighting against Russia in the war in Ukraine, Viasna reported.
This was the first time someone had been tried for mercenary activity in Belarus, the rights group said.
According to a LinkedIn profile Viasna said belonged to Krieger, he worked as a medical worker for the German Red Cross and as an armed security officer for the US embassy in Berlin.
The exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said she was “concerned” by the reports and was “collecting more information on his case”.
Belarus is the only European country to actively use capital punishment, reserving it for serious crimes including murder under aggravating circumstances, terrorism and treason.
Russia still has the death penalty but has a moratorium and has not carried out an execution since the mid-1990s.
It was not immediately clear whether Krieger had appealed against the sentence.
The Kastuś Kalinoŭski Regiment is named after the Polish-Belarusian writer and leading figure in the January uprising against the Russian empire in 1863.
The group is one of many foreign-founded volunteer units fighting alongside the Ukrainian army. It is considered an extremist group in Belarus, a close ally of Russia.
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It is still not clear what connection Krieger may have had to the group, but Belarusian opposition media reported he may have been linked to a unit within the regiment known as the Western battalion.
He was convicted of six crimes, said Viasna: unlawful acts related to firearms; the disabling of transport or communication routes; creation of or participation in an extremist group; intelligence activity; mercenary activity; and terrorism.
Belarus is reported to have executed up to 400 people since it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, according to Amnesty International. Executions of foreign citizens are rare.
The authoritarian regime of the longtime president, Alexander Lukashenko, has detained thousands of dissidents and civic activists who oppose him.
In a surprise move on Wednesday, Minsk announced it would open its borders visa-free to nationals of 35 European countries for 90-day trips, in an attempt to improve frosty relations with the west.
Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
