51. The Committee urges the State party to include torture as a separate and specific crime in its legislation and adopt a definition of torture that covers all the elements contained in article 1 of the Convention. The State party should ensure that penalties for the crime of torture are commensurate with the gravity of the crime, as required by article 4, paragraph 2 of the Convention. Non-refoulement and the use of diplomatic assurances 52. While appreciating the legislative changes entering into force in July 2017, which provide for additional guarantees of non-refoulement and more favourable protection to refugees, the Committee remains concerned at reports that the State party continues to engage in forced expulsion, deportation, returns and extradition to third countries where there are substantial grounds to believe that an individual would be in danger of being subjected to torture, and it regrets the absence of comprehensive and disaggregated data from the State party. The Committee is also concerned at reports indicating prolonged detention of people who are in violation of migration legislation, poor conditions in those detention facilities and the lack of fundamental legal safeguards provided to them. The Committee also regrets the lack of information concerning diplomatic assurances (art. 3). 53. The Committee recommends that the State party: (a) Ensure that all individuals subject to expulsion, deportation, return or extradition have an opportunity for effective and impartial review by an independent decision mechanism of any claims that they are at risk of being subjected to torture, the decisions of which should have suspensive effect; (b) Refrain from detaining migrants, including minors who may be detained with their relatives, in regular pre-trial or temporary detention facilities and provide them with access to a lawyer and other fundamental legal safeguards; (c) Establish a procedure to identify persons in situation of vulnerability and monitor the detention of undocumented migrants on a regular basis; (d) Refuse to accept diplomatic assurances in relation to extraditions of people from its territory when these assurances are used as a loophole to undermine the principle of non-refoulement as set out in Article 3 of the Convention, where there are substantial grounds for believing that they would be in danger of being subjected to torture in that State; (e) Compile and provide the Committee with detailed statistical data, disaggregated by country of origin, on the number of persons who have requested asylum or refugee status, and the outcomes of those applications, as well as the number of expulsions, deportations or extraditions that have taken place and the countries to which individuals were returned. Death penalty 54. The Committee is deeply concerned that the Criminal Code still provides death penalty as a form of punishment for 13 criminal offences, and that it is continuously imposed and enforced in criminal proceedings, with six reported executions of death row inmates since its last review (art. 16). It also notes the cases concerning, Vasily Yuzepchuk (communication no. 1906/2009), Pavel Selyun (communication no. 2289/2013), Oleg Grishkovtsov (communication no. 2013/2010) and Andrei Burdyko (communication no. 2017/2010), and those submitted by Lyubov Kovaleva (communication no. 2120/2011), Svetlana Zhuk (communication no. 1910/2009) in which the Human Rights Committee found, inter alia, confessions of guilt obtained under duress or torture. In cases concerning Alexandr Grunov (communication no. 2375/2014), Sergey Khmelevsky (communication no. 2792/2016) and Gennady Yakovitsky (communication No. 2789/2016), the individuals were executed pending the proceedings before the Human Rights Committee. The Committee is further concerned at consistent reports that persons on death row are placed in solitary confinement, conditions of detentions are deplorable, and the dates of executions or places of burial are not provided to the families in timely manner, as required by the State party’s law. 12

Select target paragraph3