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SAINT PETERSBURG: Russia cannot apply the death penalty even after a moratorium expires in 2010, a court ordered on Thursday, in a major step towards abolishing capital punishment in the country.
The end of the moratorium on January 1 "does not make it possible to apply the death penalty on Russian territory," the Constitutional Court's president Valery Zorkin said in his judgement.
He said the use of the death penalty in Russia was now impossible because Russia has signed international protocols banning the application of capital punishment.
Russia has observed a moratorium on the death penalty since 1999, when the Constitutional Court ordered it could not be applied until people in every Russian region had access to jury trials.
From January 1, the Caucasus region of Chechnya will be the last Russian region to introduce jury trials.
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 Russia's lower house of parliament, the Duma.
"The Constitutional Court has taken its decision, it is now the Duma's turn to speak. No one can force the Duma's hand," Zorkin said, speaking to reporters after the ruling.
Opinion polls have found that a huge majority of Russians support the death penalty, with an online poll by the Moskovsky Komsomolets tabloid in September finding 80 per cent in favour.
"Society must be ready for the abolition of the death penalty. It is a long process," said Mikhail Krutov, President Dmitry Medvedev's envoy to the Constitutional Court.
The Kremlin has said that it is in favour of a "stage-by-stage ban" on the death penalty while strongman leader Vladimir Putin has called capital punishment "pointless and counterproductive".
- AFP/sc
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