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U.S. | I'm a Death Row Pastor. They're Just Ordinary Folks

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In the early 1970s I was a North Carolinian, white boy from the South attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and working in East Harlem as part of a program. In my senior year, I visited men at the Bronx House of Detention. I had never been in a prison or jail, but people in East Harlem were dealing with these places and the police all the time. This experience truly turned my life around.

Belarus: Man who beheaded 8-month-old girl in "drunken stupor" sentenced to death

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A killer who beheaded an 8-month-old girl has been sentenced to death by firing squad.

Viktar Syarhel, 26, butchered little Anna Kolb after a mammoth drinking session with the toddler's mother in Brest, Belarus.

Brest Regional Court heard how Anna's horrified dad Leonid discovered his daughter "lying in a pool of blood, her head severed" when he came home from work.

Viktar and Anna's bloodsoaked mum Natalya were found nearby in a drunken stupor.

Anna's 46 injuries were so severe that paramedics fainted when they walked in.

Viktar was sentenced to death by firing squad, while the mother was locked up for 25 years - the maximum possible sentence for a woman.

The court heard how Anna had been badly beaten before the beheading - which was carried out with "particular cruelty."

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."

Belarus is the only European country that retains the death penalty.

Viktar will be forced to kneel blindfolded before being executed with a shot to the back of the head.

The method was popular with Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's death squads.

More than 400 men have been executed in Belarus since the country became independent with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Source: thesun.co.uk (edited), Staff, October 28, 2019


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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
Location: Brest, Belarus
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