Members of Chamber of Representatives adopt draft bill on amnesty

May 13, the draft “On amnesty in connection with the 70th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945". It was presented by the Minister of Interior, Ihar Shunevich. He reminded that the draft law had been prepared on errand of Aliaksandr Lukashenka.

According to Shunevich, the peculiarity of this year's amnesty compared to the previous one is the extension of the kinds of crimes, whose perpetrators fall under its action. Among them there are the persons imprisoned for pseudo-entrepreneurship, but served at least one-third of their sentence. The amnesty will not concern those who have committed serious and heinous crimes of murder, drug trafficking or have been convicted of sexual acts against those who are under 16 years old.

Shunevich: "According to preliminary calculations, as a result of the implementation of this bill there will be released about 8,600 convicted persons, including 2,400 – from penitentiary institutions, 715 – from open correctional facilities and 5,685 people who are on the regiter in the criminal-executive inspections of internal affairs”.

The MEPs had no questions to Ihar Shunevich and unanimously approved the bill in the first and in the second reading.