The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area the Constitutional Court extended it for an indefinite period of time, until Russia’s ratification of Protocol 6 to the ECHR.42 The death penalty continues to be a part of Russia’s national legislation. The Constitution retains the death penalty as an exclusive form of punishment for exceptionally grave crimes against life and grants the accused the right to a jury trial.43 The Criminal Code provides for capital punishment to be imposed for five types of offences: aggravated murder, assassination attempts against a state or public figure, attempts on the life of a person administering justice or preliminary investigations, attempts on the life of a law-enforcement official and genocide.44 The death penalty may be replaced by life-imprisonment or deprivation of liberty for 25 years.45 On 10 October 2012, Renate Wohlwend, the General Rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on the death penalty, called on Russia to eliminate the death penalty in law, in line with commitments undertaken 16 years earlier, when the country became a member of Council of Europe.46 The debate on reinstating capital punishment in Russia continued during the reporting period. In February 2013, Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev, in his private capacity, expressed support for the imposition of the death penalty for the most serious crimes. In response, several government officials stated their opposition to the death penalty, including Pavel Krasheninnikov, head of the State Duma Legislative Committee, who said that “the state should not become a tool for revenge”.47 The press secretary of Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, stated that the President’s position on the issue is established and consistent, and that the moratorium on the death penalty will be retained.48 In June 2013, an opinion poll carried out by Levada Center found that, among 1,601 people in 45 Russian regions, 38 per cent of respondents support the re42  “О решении Конституционного Суда Российской Федерации о продлении моратория на высшую меру наказания”, Официальный сайт Министерства Иностранных Дел Российской Федерации [“About the decision of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation to extend the moratorium on capital punishment”, Official Website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation], 19 November 2009, <http://www.mid.ru/bdomp/ ns-dgpch.nsf/4681a749b12257b3432569ea003614e4/432569ee00522d3cc32576730058cdb9!OpenDocument>. 43  Article 20(2) of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, adopted on 12 December 1993. 44  Article 105 (2), Article 277, Article 295, Article 317, Article 357 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, amended on 29 June 2009. 45  Ibid, Article 59 (3). 46  “Death penalty abolition worldwide: PACE rapporteur spells out the next steps”, Council of Europe, 10 October 2012, <http://assembly.coe.int/ASP/NewsManager/EMB_NewsManagerView.asp?ID=8085>. 47  “Госдума высказалась против смертной казни”, Комсомольская Правда [“The State Duma has expressed opposition to the death penalty”, Komsomolskaya Pravda], 11 February 2013, <http://www.kp.ru/online/ news/1363715/>. 48  “Песков: позиция Путина по мораторию на смертную казнь не менялась”, РИА Новости [“Peskov: Putin’s position on a moratorium on the death penalty has not changed”, RIA Novosti] 11 February 2013, <http://ria.ru/ incidents/20130211/922292827.html>. 16