another, attempting to assassinate the President, and aggravated homicide. Other offences that carry the death penalty are included in the Military Criminal Code, the Law on the Prohibition and Prosecution of Smuggling, and the Law on Forestry. Pregnant women sentenced to death may not be executed before they have given birth. Mentally ill persons may not be executed before they have recovered. The Bill on a new Penal Code currently being examined by the Grand National Assembly no longer includes capital punishment56. A de facto moratorium on executions has been in force since 1984, as the Grand National Assembly has not voted on any death sentences brought before it for final ratification. The finalized sentences are held without processing at the Justice Committee. However, following the verdict in the trial against Kurdish Workers' Party leader Abdullah Öcalan who was sentenced to death on 29 June 1999 it is not clear whether this practice will be further maintained. Öcalan's death sentence was confirmed by the Turkish Appeal Court in November 199957. At least 21 death sentences were handed down by Turkish civil and military courts in 1998. In 1999, a total of at least 24 death sentences were passed, of which 3 were upheld by the Appeal Court58. According to official information, there were 40 prisoners under sentence of death in Turkish prisons as of 1 January 199959. 4.15 Turkmenistan The death penalty was formally abolished in Turkmenistan at the annual session of the People's Assembly (Halk Maslahaty) on 29 December 1999. In signing the law abolishing capital punishment, President Saparmurat Niyazov stated that existing death sentences would be automatically changed into prison terms60. A moratorium on executions had been in force since 1 January 1999. Since then, no executions have been reported. Before the moratorium was introduced, the death penalty had been thought to be widely applied in Turkmenistan, very often in drug-related cases. No official statistics had been available, however, as, in violation of paragraph 17.8 of the Copenhagen Document, the death penalty had been classified as a state secret. Executions had been reported to be often carried out promptly following the court's Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD