MOSCOW: A German man sentenced to death by a court in Belarus appeared on television Thursday to ask for a pardon.

Rico Krieger, 30, was convicted under six articles of Belarus's criminal code in a secretive trial held at the end of June, the Viasna Human Rights Centre reported.

"I really hope that President (Alexander) Lukashenko will forgive me and pardon me," the German national told Belarusian public television, according to a statement quoted by the Russian news agency TASS.

He said that he had been asked by Ukraine to photograph military sites in Belarus in October 2023 and that he had placed an explosive device on a railway line near Minsk under their orders.

"I deeply regret what I did and I am relieved that there were no victims," he said, adding that he had been "abandoned" by the German government.

According to a LinkedIn profile that Viasna said belonged to Krieger, he worked as a medic for the German Red Cross and had previously been employed as an armed security officer for the US embassy in Berlin.

A source at the German Foreign Ministry told AFP last week that it and the embassy in Minsk were "providing the person in question with consular services and are making intensive representations to the Belarusian authorities on his behalf."

The source added that "the death penalty is a cruel and inhuman form of punishment that Germany rejects under all circumstances."

Belarus is reported to have executed as many as 400 people since it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, according to Amnesty International, but executions of foreign citizens are rare.

The country is run as an authoritarian regime by long-time leader Lukashenko, who has detained thousands of dissidents and civic activists who oppose him.

  - AFP