Last Friday's attack, which killed 139 people at a concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow, has led some Russians to call for the country to reinstate the death penalty and execute the perpetrators.
A combination of presidential lawsuits and court decisions has resulted in a moratorium on the death penalty in Russia for 28 years. However, the death penalty remains on the record, and although it has been suspended, it has not been completely abolished.
Russian authorities are divided over whether and how to reinstate it, and the country's Constitutional Court announced Tuesday it would investigate the issue.
Let's see where the problem lies.
Who supports or opposes the death penalty?
A number of prominent figures have called for the execution of the concert hall attacker, who officials describe as a radical Islamist from Tajikistan in Central Asia.
On Monday, former President and Prime Minister of Russia Dmitri A. Medvedev wrote on Telegram: need. And it will be accomplished. ”
He added that all those involved in the attack, including the funders and supporters, should be killed.
Such calls have surfaced regularly, particularly after terrorist attacks, but it is unclear how widespread their support is. And they also have strong opponents.
Lidia Mikheeva, secretary of the government's advisory body Citizens' Chamber, told state-run TASS news agency that abolishing the death penalty was one of the most important achievements in modern Russian history. “We all need to stop and think if we don't want to go back to barbaric and barbaric times,” she said.
Where does President Putin stand?
Nothing will change unless President Vladimir V. Putin, an autocratic president with near-control of parliament, speaks out. He has publicly and repeatedly opposed the death penalty over the past few years.
Putin and his security services have often been accused of killing or attempting to kill his enemies, including journalists, political opponents, business leaders and former spies, both at home and abroad. Opposition leader Alexei A. Navalny, who survived an assassination attempt with a nerve agent, died in a Russian prison last month. His allies claimed he had been abused and denied medical treatment.
Still, in 2002, Mr. Putin said that “as long as it is up to me, there will be no death penalty in Russia,” although he said restoring the death penalty would be popular. According to Russian media reports, he told a conference in 2007 that formal capital punishment was “pointless and counterproductive.” He said his position in 2022 “has not changed.”
Regarding the discussion after the concert hall massacre, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov said, “We are not currently taking part in this discussion,” according to TASS news agency.
How did the moratorium begin and how has it continued?
The Soviet Union was one of the countries that carried out the death penalty most frequently in the world, and even after the collapse of the state, Russia continued to carry out executions.
But in 1996, to win membership in the human rights organization the Council of Europe, Mr. Putin's predecessor, President Boris N. Yeltsin, agreed to suspend the death penalty and abolish it completely within three years. .
The Russian parliament did not agree to this plan. Instead of ratifying the European Convention on Human Rights, which the Yeltsin government had signed, it adopted a new criminal law that left the death penalty as an option.
In 1999, the Constitutional Court intervened and ruled that the death penalty could not be used until jury trials were held throughout Russia. In 2009, after jury trials began, the court ruled that the moratorium would continue, in accordance with Council of Europe rules, partly because more than a decade of no capital punishment had given people hope that it would not be carried out. handed down a judgment.
The court stated that “a stable guarantee of the human right not to be punished by the death penalty has been formed, and a constitutional and legal system has been born.''
What does it take to restart executions?
It's unclear.
The Council of Europe expelled Russia after it invaded Ukraine in 2022. This means that Moscow is no longer considered a party to the human rights treaty, which was the original basis for the suspension.
At the time, President of the Constitutional Court Valerie D. Zorkin stated that it would be impossible to reinstate the death penalty without adopting a new constitution.
“Despite the current extraordinary circumstances, it would be a great mistake to turn away from the path of humanization of legislative policy that we have generally followed in recent decades,” he said in a speech at the St. Petersburg International Law Forum. I think so.” “And in particular, the refusal to suspend the death penalty in Russia, which some politicians have already called for, would send a very bad signal to society.”
But some politicians argued that the death penalty could be reinstated without changing the constitution, provided human rights treaties were not used as a barrier.
This position was expressed this week by Vyacheslav V. Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament. He said the Constitutional Court could lift the suspension.
“I and you all left the Council of Europe, right? That's right,” he said.