Federation has still neither formally abolished the death penalty nor ratified Protocol No. 6. Although draft laws on the introduction of a moratorium, the abolition of the death penalty and the ratification of Protocol No. 6 have been under preparation or already put before the Parliament, all initiatives in this regard were blocked by the previous State Duma47.< According to official information, 67 persons were sentenced to death during the first six months of 1998. As of February 1999, about 900 prisoners were under sentence of death48. On 3 June 1999, however, President Yeltsin signed a decree commuting the death sentence of all convicts on death row into either life sentences or 25-year prison terms49. Chechnya Executions had been carried out in Chechnya before the beginning of the Russian Federation's military operation in late 1999. The Supreme Shari'a Court imposed the death penalty for various offences, including murder, kidnapping, and drugrelated crimes. At least one person was executed in 1998. According to the Chechen presidential press service, 11 persons were executed during the first six months of 1999 for drug trafficking alone50. The total number of executions is not known. 4.13 Tajikistan The new Criminal Code of Tajikistan, in force since 1 September 1998, reduces the number of crimes carrying a possible death sentence from 44 to 15, including murder, rape, terrorism, hijacking, drug trafficking and illegal cultivation of forbidden crops containing narcotic substances. Death sentences can be commuted to 25 years' imprisonment. Pregnant women and persons below 18 years of age at the time of the crime are excluded from capital punishment51. In violation of paragraph 17.8 of the Copenhagen Document, no official information on the use of the death penalty is made available by the Tajik authorities. According to unofficial information, at least 24 persons were sentenced Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD