A man who murdered and decapitated an eight-month-old girl has been sentenced to death by gunshot to the back of the head.
Viktar Syarhel, 48, will be blindfolded and forced to kneel when the punishment is carried out in a method similar to that used in Stalin times in the Soviet Union.
The child's mother, Natalya Kolb, 26, was also found guilty of murder and has been sentenced to 25 years in prison in Belarus.
Kolb’s husband, Leonid, came home with the couple’s two sons and “saw his daughter lying in the pool of blood" with her head severed, according to reports.
Syarhel, a family friend, and Kolb were in the flat and had been drinking together.
The child had 46 separate injured on her body and was killed with a kitchen knife.
A neighbour said: “When Leonid came into the flat he saw a scene out of the horror movies.
“The ambulance doctor fainted when she came in.”
The baby had been badly beaten before being killed and the murder was with “particular cruelty”, the closed-door session of Brest Regional Court ruled.
Neighbours believed the family were "happy" and they had recently baptised the child in the Orthodox Church.
Kolb was spared the death penalty because women cannot be executed in Belarus, an ex-Soviet state and the only European country that retains capital punishment.
Kolb was sentenced to the maximum penalty for women.
Only men aged between 18 and 65 are executed.
More than 400 men have been executed in Belarus since the country became independent with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Belarus executed at least four inmates in 2018 and two in 2017, according to Amnesty International.
The EU and various international organisations have urged Belarus to stop using the death penalty.
Amnesty International says data on the use of the death penalty is classified as a state secret in Belarus.
It also claims death sentences were known to have been imposed after court proceedings that did not meet international fair trial standards.
Belarus' president, Alexander Lukashenko, recently indicated he would go on approving death penalty verdicts despite hinting he had personal reservations.
He said this month: "If the people vote so, we will abolish it. We have had a referendum.
“Do you think I am happy about this death penalty, considering that I sign it, and then, put crudely, someone is shot?"
But he said the people had decided in a 1996 referendum to permit the death penalty.
“That's how the people have voted,” he said.
“According to the constitution, this is within the president's purview in any country where the death penalty is used.”
