The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area RUSSIAN FEDERATION A moratorium on the application of the death penalty has been in place in the Russian Federation since 1996, as a result of its obligations as a member of the Council of Europe to abolish capital punishment.13 On 21 December 2010, the Russian Federation, for the first time, co-sponsored the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty at the UN General Assembly.14 The Resolution had been put before the Assembly on two previous occasions. During a session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, in April 2011, the Vice-Chairman of the Committee on Legal and Judicial Affairs of the Federation Council, Nikolai Shaklein, stated that today “the death penalty is unnatural” and specified that, since 1 January 2010, “under no circumstances is the death sentence to be delivered” in the Russian Federation. He explained that the parliament of the Russian Federation has been working on the ratification of Protocol No. 6 to the Council of Europe’s Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and expressed the hope that the document would be ratified in the near future.15 Debates on ending the moratorium on the use of the death penalty occasionally still resurface. The question of whether the death penalty should be applied for those convicted of committing terrorist acts received significant public coverage following the Moscow Metro bombings of 29 March 2010 and the Moscow Domodedovo Airport terrorist bombing of 24 January 2011. In reaction to the latter, on 27 January 2011, the Vice-Chairman of the Security and Defense Committee of the Federation Council and ex-Deputy Interior Minister, Aleksander Chekalin, expressed his personal conviction that international negotiations on the reinstatement of death penalty for terrorists should be initiated. Chekalin said that not only the perpetrators of terrorist attacks should be sentenced to death, but also “organizers, persons providing funding and instigators” .16 13  “Honouring of the commitment entered into by Russia upon accession to the Council of Europe to put into place a moratorium on executions of the death penalty”, Report, Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, 28 January 1997, <http://assembly.coe.int/Main.asp?link=/Documents/WorkingDocs/Doc97/EDOC7746.htm>. 14  Country information on the Russian Federation, Hands off Cain, <http://www.handsoffcain.info/bancadati/schedastato.php?idcontinente=9&nome=russia>. 15  “Russian Senators: Nowadays Death Penalty is unnatural”, Federation Council Press Release, 14 April 2011, <http://www.council.gov.ru/inf_ps/chronicle/2011/04/item16103.html>. 16  Ibid. 5