were carried out in 199929. In violation of paragraph 17.8 of the Copenhagen Document, there is very little transparency concerning the use of the death penalty in Belarus. The secrecy surrounding capital punishment also extends to execution procedures. Relatives are not informed of the date of the execution, hence they do not have an opportunity for a last meeting before the execution. The body is not returned to the family, and the place of burial remains unknown30. There are numerous allegations of serious irregularities during the investigations and legal proceedings in cases that have resulted in death verdicts and executions. These allegations include forced confession under torture, lack of conclusive evidence, and denial of the right to legal defence31. 4.5 Bosnia and Herzegovina There is no provision with regard to the death penalty at state level as criminal legislation belongs to the competence of the two entities, the Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to the Criminal Code of the Republika Srpska (RS), a wide range of peacetime and wartime offences may be punished with the death penalty, including murder, robbery, international terrorism, hijacking of an aircraft, assassination of a representative of high State authorities, acknowledging capitulation and occupation, as well as numerous other war-related crimes. Furthermore, the death penalty may be imposed for a large number of ordinary offences if committed in time of war or when the danger of war is imminent. There is no official moratorium in place, but the Supreme Court of the RS has issued a decision whereby the death penalty was amended to 20 years of imprisonment to be consistent with the ECHR. Although this decision is not binding for the lower courts, it apparently has been complied with so far. Courts have not passed any death sentences during the period under review. However, two prisoners still remained on death row as of 31 December 1999. The proposed amendments to the Criminal Code currently under consideration do not contain the death penalty anymore32. In the Federation, the death penalty was abolished with the coming into force of a new Criminal Code in November 1998, which replaced capital punishment with Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD