Kazakhstan abolishes death penalty
Kazakhstan abolishes death penalty
A moratorium on capital punishment had been in place since the beginning of the new century
Kazakhstan has abolished the death penalty after a moratorium on executions in the authoritarian Central Asian country for nearly 20 years, the presidency said on Saturday. According to a notice published on his official website, Head of State Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has signed the ratification of the second Optional Protocol relating to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The text, ratified last year by the Kazakh Parliament, obliges its signatories to abolish the death penalty within their borders.
Executions have been suspended in Kazakhstan since 2003. Nevertheless, courts continued to sentence defendants to death for exceptional crimes, including those found to be terrorism-related. A man who killed eight police officers and two civilians in a carnage in the country's largest city, Almaty, in 2016 was sentenced to death. This sentence is now converted to life imprisonment.
As large as four times France, Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic, has 18 million inhabitants. In the former USSR, only Belarus continues to apply the death penalty on a regular basis. Russia abolished it de facto, without explicitly banning it.
Source:- Flash News and News Agencies