The upper house of the Russian parliament may propose amendments to the criminal law stipulating the death penalty for organizers of terrorist attacks resulting in multiple deaths, the chairman of the Federation Council's Committee on Legal and Juridical Issues said.
"This is our reaction to yesterday's tragic events in Moscow," Anatoly Lyskov said.
On Monday, two deadly suicide bombings hit the Moscow subway, killing at least 39 people and injuring more than 70. The blasts ripped through the packed Lubyanka and Park Kultury stations of the Sokolnicheskaya line with an interval of about 40 minutes in the morning rush hour.
Lyskov said his committee was working on a draft law which would introduce death penalty for terrorists. The current law provides for life imprisonment for terrorist acts leading to the death of a single individual. The new amendments would provide for capital punishment for staging a terrorist attack that results in multiple losses of life. It is unclear how an amendment stipulating the death penalty for such crimes would correlate with a moratorium on the death penalty prolonged in November 2009 by the Russian Constitutional Court.
The death penalty was de-facto abolished in Russia in 1996. The country imposed the moratorium after it joined the Council of Europe that year and signed the European Convention on Human Rights, but it has not ratified the document yet.
The Russian parliamentarian said, however, "if such terrible crimes take place, we should propose the society a new variant of criminal punishment, so that people involved in a terrorist attack know what to expect."
He added the amendments to be worked out by the Federation Council's committee also stipulated that people involved in terrorist attacks resulting in multiple loss of life could not be pardoned.
Lyskov said the committee would work out the amendments at the earliest possible date and send them to the government and the Supreme Court for approval.
On Monday, the Russian Communist leader, Gennady Zyuganov, proposed the death penalty be reinstated for "the most heinous crimes."
"It's difficult to imagine a crime more horrible than the one that occurred today," he said, pointing to Monday's blasts.
MOSCOW, March 30 (RIA Novosti)
