German sentenced to death in Belarus hopes for pardon from Lukashenko

(Reuters) - A German national sentenced to death on terrorism charges by a court in ex-Soviet Belarus said on Wednesday that he regretted his actions and hoped to secure a pardon from President Alexander Lukashenko, media reports said.

"I truly hope that President Lukashenko will forgive and pardon me," Russia's Tass news agency quoted Rico Krieger as saying on the Belarus-1 state TV channel.

Krieger said Ukraine's SBU security service instructed him to photograph military sites in Belarus in October 2023 and directed him to a location, where he found a backpack that he left on train tracks at a station southeast of Minsk. It exploded before the arrival of a train but no one was hurt.

"I deeply regret what I did and am relieved that there were no casualties. What is very frightening is that if (the death sentence) is carried out, my body won't be handed to Germany and my relatives won't even have a chance to say good-bye."

Krieger, who described himself as an emergency services worker, said he has met with German diplomats and, "They told me that in this instance there was nothing the German government could do." He said he felt "totally abandoned".

There was no immediate reaction from Germany. The country's foreign ministry said on July 19 that Berlin was in intensive contact with authorities in Minsk over the fate of a German national sentenced to death, whom it didn't name.

News reports last week said Germany and Belarus had been discussing the case, with Minsk proposing some "solutions".

The Belarusian rights organisation Viasna last week first made public Krieger's death sentence, handed down on June 24.

Belarus is one of Russia's closest allies and allowed its territory to be used in Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Some Belarusian activists have attacked rail lines in the country to try to act against the invasion.

(Reporting by Ron Popeski; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)