Senator demands death penalty for large-scale drug dealers

Mikalay Chagrynets, the chairman of the Council of the Republic’s Foreign Affairs and National Security Committee, has proposed that the head of Belarus’s Supreme Court “analyzes the situation regarding the punishment for various crimes”.

The motion is made following the April 2007 amendments in the Penal Code which envisage a prison term from 8 to 13 years for selling or possessing even a minimal drug doze. Under the law, both the drug dealers and consumers face a similar punishment.

Doctors immediately disputed this approach in fighting the drug abuse. Hanna Krauchanka from the Paratsels medical center believes that it is mainly ordinary drug addicts who get behind bars instead of drug dealers.

Hanna Krauchanka: “The minimum doze that a drug addict can carry along should be increased not reduced. One gram is too little. Drug addict is a sick person who will definitely carry this one gram anyway. Other measures should be taken. I suggest strengthening controls over the dissemination of drugs on the territory of this country. This problem can’t be resolved by simply sending people to prison”.

The European Radio for Belarus asked Mikalay Chagrynets why he raised this issue with Valiantsin Sukala, the chairman of the Supreme Court of Belarus.

Mikalay Chagrynets: “I’m alarmed that our laws could make it possible for law-enforcement agents to focus on framing young people who buy small dozes of 0.5 grams for someone else. There are very many cases when young people, mostly minors, are arrested, while wholesale dealers and those who mastermind drug trafficking remain unpunished. Police should focus on the big shots in this business”.

Large scale dealers and transporters are the main problem, Chagrynets says.

“Wholesale dealers and smugglers should face death penalty”.

The senator also commented on the so called “operative experiments”. The term often means that police simply set up innocent people for drug trafficking who eventually end up in jail. He even wrote a letter to the Prosecutor General in this regard.

“I also asked the courts to provide me with the data who was prosecuted in drug-abuse cases. What are they convicted for? Do they have information about the sources of drug supplies? Therefore, I want to make a conclusion whether these operative experiments are justified,” Chagrynets said.

Law-enforcement agencies stick to their opinion on this matter.

“Possessing and selling drugs are crimes. If we find out that drugs are carried for sale, this person will face a more severe punishment. If someone simply keeps the drugs in a pocket for personal use, he or she will be punished for possession,” Aleh Piakarski, the chief of the police’s drug enforcement unit told the European Radio for Belarus.

Mikalay Chagrynets is confident that his opinion will be taken into consideration. Yet, he could not answer the question about what will happen with the already convicted victims of police experiments. Margaryta Tsaran, 19 was framed by police agents in Hrodna and sentenced to four years in prison. The sentence was later changed to three years of restricted freedom. However, her conviction has not been cleared.

Mikalay Chagrynets: “There is a problem. That’s why I have raised it”.

Photo: www.tiga.by