Igor Mirenkov was a resident of Svetlogorsk, a small town in the Gomel region of Belarus, about 200 kilometers southeast of Minsk. In April 1994 police detained him, and by the summer of that year they had linked him to the deaths of boys in the town stretching back to 1990. The prosecution at his trial counted six victims, all boys between the ages of 9 and 14. On August 9, 1995 the Svetlogorsk Regional Court sentenced him to death. He was executed in 1996.
The Belarusian outlet Zerkalo has called him the first serial offender of independent Belarus, and his death sentence drew the attention of Amnesty International, which was then campaigning against the death penalty in the country. How many of the six killings the verdict itself covered is not on record: the six are the prosecution's count, and the sentence is what the court imposed.
Svetlogorsk is a town of the Gomel region on the Berezina river. Mirenkov was born about 1969 and grew up there; his mother still lived in the town in 1994. Zerkalo reported that he had served in the navy and had at one time played music at a Svetlogorsk restaurant. When he was detained in April 1994 he was recorded as officially unemployed, at the age of 25.
Zerkalo wrote that he was serving a three-year sentence in Gomel for a robbery committed in Bobruisk, held in a special settlement regime. Because he was in good standing there, he was allowed short leaves, and he used them to return to Svetlogorsk. A regional Gomel outlet, progomel.by, in 2018 dated the robbery conviction to 1993, with a sentence of three years of corrective labor, and said he committed new crimes during his leaves.
The investigation tied Mirenkov to six boys, all from Svetlogorsk. Each date is the one the investigation attributed to that death; a regional Gomel outlet gave the same ages and dates for the first two and placed the other four in 1993.
Aleksandr Aliseyko was 13 and was killed on June 2, 1990. Vitaly Yakimov was 10 (his age is given as 11 in some accounts) and was killed on April 16, 1991. Viktor Novikov, 13, was killed on March 30, 1993. Sergei Kasyanenko, 9, was killed on June 20, 1993. Anatoly Radchenko, 14, was killed on July 5, 1993. Vasily Nakov, 9, was killed on August 9, 1993.
The first two deaths fell under the Soviet Union. The remaining four came after Belarus had become independent, which is why Zerkalo described Mirenkov as the first such offender to be active in both the Soviet republic and the independent state. Which of these deaths the verdict formally covered is not on record. Relatives of the victims held a picket shortly before the trial opened.
Zerkalo wrote that the killings were spread over several years, which made the cases hard to connect. A large team, 25 to 30 people according to Zerkalo, worked on the file, which grew to between 10 and 12 volumes. The investigator Yazep Brolishs told the outlet that the team assembled the common features from the case papers bit by bit.
Police in Svetlogorsk made the case public in the first days of June 1994. The Moscow Times reported on June 2, 1994 that a young man had been charged with murdering four small boys, that the police chief, Vladimir Osipenko, said he had been detained the week before and was being held at an undisclosed location to protect him from angry townspeople, and that Itar-Tass had reported six cases involving children in the town since 1990. The count rose to six by the time of the trial.
Mirenkov was detained on April 24, 1994 in Bobruisk. According to Zerkalo, the immediate allegation was an attempt to take diesel fuel from a vehicle depot. He admitted the theft but at first denied any involvement in the killings. Later in 1994 he confessed, and the confession was filmed. A regional Gomel outlet reported that he confessed to six killings during questioning.
His first line of defense was an alibi: that he had been serving his sentence in the Gomel region and could not have been in Svetlogorsk. Brolishs answered that the settlement's own records showed his short leaves, and that several of them coincided with the dates attributed to the killings.
The trial opened on August 1, 1995 at the Svetlogorsk Regional Court. The prosecutor, Oleg Ligoshko, asked for the death penalty. Relatives of the victims were in the courtroom. One victim's father demanded a public execution and said that the whole of Belarus had been trembling. The same father told the court that the number of victims was twenty, not six. The prosecution did not put that figure forward, and it is not supported by any finding.
Mirenkov, in his final statement, said he had no right to ask for forgiveness and expected only a death sentence. The judge, Alexander Degtyarev, left the courtroom and returned after about an hour with the verdict.
On August 9, 1995 the court sentenced Mirenkov to death with confiscation of property. Amnesty International, in a notice dated September 29, 1996, recorded that he was 27 and that the Svetlogorsk Regional Court had sentenced him to death on August 9, 1995 for premeditated murder with aggravating circumstances under Article 100 of the Belarusian Criminal Code.
How many killings the verdict listed, and which other counts it contained, is not on record. Zerkalo mentions that an insurance claim over his car was later classed as fraud, without saying whether it formed part of the case. What is on record is a death sentence for premeditated murder with aggravating circumstances, imposed after the prosecution laid six killings before the court.
Mirenkov did not seek clemency. Zerkalo says he asked the clemency commission to carry out the sentence quickly. No appeal was reported.
Amnesty International was unaware of this when it acted. Its September 1996 notice warned that his execution might be imminent, partly because a Belarusian Supreme Court official had said 24 executions had taken place in 1996 up to September 24, and because President Aleksandr Lukashenko had reportedly granted clemency to no prisoner under sentence of death in two and a half years in office. The same notice cited a rise in death sentences in Belarus from about 20 in 1990 to 40 in 1994 and 46 in 1995. On October 13, 1996 Amnesty reported that the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had told it that Mirenkov was executed in June 1996. Zerkalo, too, dates the execution to 1996. The place of execution was not reported.
Several points remain open.
The number of victims. The prosecution counted six. One victim's father said twenty to the court. No finding supports the larger figure.
The count in the verdict. The sentence is documented, and so is its legal description, but how many of the six killings it covered is not on record. The six are attributed by the prosecution and investigators, and Mirenkov confessed to them in 1994, but the exact judgment is not on record.
The dates. Each date given for the six boys is the date the investigation attributed to the killing, and the town of the fourth and fifth boys is not stated outright.
Mirenkov's age. Amnesty gave his age as 27 in autumn 1996; Zerkalo gave 25 at the time of his arrest in 1994. The two are consistent with a birth about 1969.
About 1969: Igor Mirenkov is born; he lives in Svetlogorsk.
Later: serves in the navy and works as a musician at a Svetlogorsk restaurant.
June 2, 1990: first killing attributed to him (Aleksandr Aliseyko, 13).
April 16, 1991: second killing attributed (Vitaly Yakimov, 10).
1993: sentenced to three years for a robbery; held in a special settlement regime in the Gomel region (year as given by progomel.by).
March 30, June 20, July 5 and August 9, 1993: the four remaining killings attributed (Viktor Novikov, Sergei Kasyanenko, Anatoly Radchenko, Vasily Nakov).
April 24, 1994: detained at Bobruisk.
June 2, 1994: the Moscow Times reports a young man charged in the deaths of four boys, with six children reported by Itar-Tass.
1994: confesses on camera.
August 1, 1995: trial opens at the Svetlogorsk Regional Court.
August 9, 1995: sentenced to death with confiscation of property.
June 1996: executed (as confirmed to Amnesty by the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
September 29, 1996: Amnesty International issues a notice fearing imminent execution.
October 13, 1996: Amnesty reports the execution.