Russia to rule on death penalty reintroduction

The Saint Petersburg-based Constitutional Court will rule Thursday whether Russian judges can again hand out the death penalty.

Russia will decide in three days whether the death penalty can be reintroduced in January, a measure that has public support but would contravene its Council of Europe obligations, a court said Monday.

The Saint Petersburg-based Constitutional Court will rule Thursday whether Russian judges can again hand out the death penalty once a moratorium on capital punishment expires at the start of 2010.

- The decision will be announced on November 19 at 10:00 am (0700 GMT) - the court said in a statement.

Capital punishment has never been abolished, but in 1999 the Constitutional Court ruled the death penalty could not be used until people all over Russia had access to jury trials.

The Caucasus region of Chechnya will be the last Russian region to introduce jury trials from January 1, effectively bringing the current moratorium to an end.

Russia is obliged to abolish the death penalty as a member of the Council of Europe. It has signed the corresponding protocol of the European Human Rights Convention but the document has yet to be ratified by parliament.

The punishment remains in its legal code.

The Constitutional Court began examining the issue on November 9, where the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's representative to the court said the Kremlin was in favour of a "stage-by-stage ban" on the death penalty.

Opinion polls have found that a huge majority of Russians support capital punishment.