Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko on Wednesday called the execution of two men controversially convicted of bombing the Minsk metro a “tragedy,” but said he had no doubts about their guilt. “It was a tragedy in my life. Most of all I feel for the parents of those men, whom unfortunately I can’t help,” the veteran Belarus president said in an interview with Russia’s state-funded television channel RT. Belarus authorities last week executed two 26-year-old factory workers convicted of planting explosives in a busy metro station close to Lukashenko’s offices in April 2011, killing 15 people and injuring scores more. The trial saw one of the men recant his testimony and the prosecution fail to come up with a conclusive motive for the attack. The European Union had urged Lukashenko to cancel the executions and introduce a moratorium on the death penalty, a call joined after the executions by Minsk’s main ally Moscow.Lukashenko dismissed the criticism and described the trial as “absolutely transparent.”
