August 11, 1997

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia still has the death penalty on the books, but no one has been executed in a year and President Boris Yeltsin is making strides toward phasing it out, officials said Monday.

Russia pledged to outlaw the death penalty in January 1996 when it joined the Council of Europe, the continent's leading human rights organization.

But efforts to ban it were blocked by the Duma, parliament's lower house dominated by Communists and other hard-liners.

Human rights activists say Russia executed 62 prisoners after joining the council. The last execution took place in August 1996, said Valery Borshchev, a liberal lawmaker and presidential human rights advisor.

In order to keep Russia's obligations, the president's office has been closely scrutinizing existing death sentences and Yeltsin has granted all appeals for pardons received so far this year, Borshchev said in an interview with the ITAR-Tass news agency.

The report didn't say how many people were pardoned.

Yeltsin is also trying parliament again. Under a proposed bill Yeltsin sent to parliament last month, before any death sentence can be carried out it must be approved by the chairman of Russia's Supreme Court, the nation's top prosecutor and the presidential commission for pardons.

ITAR-Tass quoted Mikhail Gutsiriyev, the Duma's deputy speaker, as saying the bill has good chance of passing.

---------------------

Johnson's Russia List

#1116

12 August 1997

djohnson@cdi.org