The amnesty passed the State Duma

Today, December 18, the State Duma in the third reading approved a draft decree on an amnesty for the 20th year of the Constitution of the Russian Federation.

According to Interfax , as a result of the amendments adopted, the document was expanded - the amnesty was extended not only to convicts in parts 2 and 3 of Article 212 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“mass riots”), but also to the accused and suspects under this article.

The deputies also approved the liberation of convicts, suspects and accused under article 213 (“hooliganism”). As a result, the estimated number of amnestied increased by 3-7 thousand people and will be about 25 thousand.

Amendments on the spread of amnesty on convicts and under investigation on the article on the organization of riots (part 1 of Article 212 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) were not approved, therefore, amnesty, in particular, will not be affected by Sergei Udaltsov and Leonid Razvoszhaev from the “Left Front”.

Among the candidates for amnesty, the members of the Pussy Riot group, most of the defendants in the “swamp business” and the crew of the Arctic Sunrise vessel, detained in September after the Greenpeace campaign in the Barents Sea.

The amnesty project was expelled by accused and convicts in cases of excess of official powers using violence, special equipment, and also entailing grave consequences (part 3 Article 286). This decision, in particular, will not allow freedom to law enforcement officers convicted of torture of the suspects.

The amnesty should exempt from criminal liability of the least socially protected convicts, as well as persons who have merits to the state.

The Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, Vladimir Lukin, called the draft amnesty, approved by the State Duma more narrow than the one proposed by the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation.

“I knew that it would be so, that the option of the wide amnesty that we proposed rejected. But it cannot be said that I was upset when I found out that there would be no wide amnesty. A wide amnesty is not in the style of our leadership, ”commented the head of the Moscow Helsinki group Lyudmila Alekseeva.