EU urges Belarus to halt execution of metro bombers

(BRUSSELS) - EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton appealed to Belarus Friday not to execute two men condemned to death for a fatal bombing on the Minsk metro last year.

A statement from Ashton's office said she was "very concerned" about the decision not to pardon factory workers Dmitry Konovalov and Vladislav Kovalyov, who were sentenced to death in November.

"(Ashton) again urges the authorities of Belarus not to carry out the executions," the statement said.

Belarus, which has grown increasingly isolated from the West, is the last country in Europe to administer the death penalty, although the practice is highly secretive and no official statistics exist.

"The European Union opposes the use of capital punishment under all circumstances," Ashton said, calling on Belarus to join a global moratorium on the use of the death penalty as a first step towards its universal abolition.

Konovalov was found guilty of bringing explosives to a central Minsk metro station and setting off the bomb blast that killed 15 people in April. Kovalyov was sentenced to death as an accomplice.

It was the worst attack in the republic's post-Soviet history and was immediately blamed by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko on foreign and domestic enemies.

State television said on Wednesday that Lukashenko, who was re-elected in December 2010 in a controversial vote, had decided not to grant clemency to the two 25-year-old factory workers.