Bastrykin wants to leave the death penalty - as a "hypothetical possibility of application"

The head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Alexander Bastrykin, at a meeting with State Duma deputies, spoke in to maintain an exclusive punishment in the form of a death penalty in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, Interfax reports.

"I do not urge to return the death penalty in the order of implementation, but it seems to me that it should be present in our legislation as a hypothetical possibility of its application," Bastrykin said.

He noted that in Soviet times in Leningrad, 100-120 death sentences were carried out in a year, "but three to five, up to ten were implemented." "The person understood that he could be lifted with life," said the head of the TFR.

He also cited the criminal legislation of Belarus, which allows the death penalty, and the case of its application in relation to two men found guilty of the attack in the Minsk metro. "Two people were executed , everything is closed. In Belarus, I think, such terrible events will not be repeated soon," Bastrykin said.

In accordance with the legal position of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, from April 16, 1997, the death penalty cannot be applied in the Russian Federation. On that day, the Russian Federation signed Protocol 6 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms "regarding the abolition of the death penalty" and assumed the obligation to cancel this type of criminal punishment. Then a moratorium on the death penalty was introduced in the country, its alternative is a lifelong conclusion. The moratorium expired on January 1, 2010, but in November 2009 the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation extended it - until the State Duma ratifies the protocol on the abolition of the death penalty.

The last death sentence in Russia was executed in 1996. Currently, there are still nine initiatives, related to both the final cancellation of the execution and with the abolition of the moratorium on it, as the State Duma. Meanwhile, polls of public opinion show that more than half of the Russian citizens want to return the death penalty.

In 2013, according to the human rights organization of Amnesty International, only four countries abandoned the moratorium on the death penalty: it is Indonesia, Kuwait, Nigeria and Vietnam.

In the HRC do not agree with Bastrykin

The head of the Presidential Council for Human Rights, Mikhail Fedotov, does not see the need to refuse Russia to refuse a moratorium on the death penalty even for the hypothetical possibility of its application.

“We must look for other ways to strengthen the fight against crime,” Fedotov said.

The head of the HRC said that from the decision of the Constitutional Court of Russia it follows that the death penalty could not be restored.

“We must proceed from the fact that Russia has obligations to the Council of Europe, and we fulfill these obligations,” Fedotov emphasized.