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Japan | Hakamada found religion, but then felt under attack by ‘the devil’

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Editor's note: This is the last in a four-part series on letters that Iwao Hakamada wrote while on death row. About a decade after cursing God, Iwao Hakamada was baptized Catholic at the Tokyo Detention House on Dec. 24, 1984. “Since I have been given the Christian name Paul, I am keenly feeling that I should be aware of the greatness of Paul.” (June 1985)

Belarus: Death sentence confirmed for double murderer

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Belarus President A. Lukashenko
September 17, 2013: The Supreme Court of Belarus confirmed the death sentence for a man convicted of killing two people last year after police caught him transporting a decapitated head from one of the bodies.

Pavel Selyun, 23, was convicted of double murder and sentenced to death in June, and the sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court which reviewed Selyun's appeal to soften the punishment, the court's spokeswoman Maria Lappo said.

Selyun was arrested in August 2012 on the train, where he was transporting the head of his male victim in a bag.

Two days earlier he had killed the man in the city of Grodno, along with his own wife, apparently out of jealousy over their love affair. He stuffed the man's body into a trash chute and took the head along with him when he left town.

Police had said that Selyun as well as his two victims were satanists. Selyun was eventually convicted of murder, desecration of a corpse, and theft.

Belarus is the only country in Europe with the death penalty, administered through shooting the convict in the back of the neck. The sentence is usually carried out in secret.

The country's hardline President Alexander Lukashenko issued a pardon to only one convict on death row in the past 20 years, in 1999. Selyun's sentence is the fourth known death sentence this year.

Source: AAP, Sept. 18, 2013
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