The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area–Background Paper 2019 Criminal Code that came into force on 1 January 2018 raised the number of offences subject to the death penalty from 18 to 19.295 At the end of the reporting period, one person was known to be under sentence of death. In November 2016, a specialized district criminal court of Almaty city handed down a death sentence on Ruslan Kulekbayev, who was found guilty of a shooting spree that resulted in the death of eight police officers and two civilians. His sentence can be commuted to life imprisonment or imprisonment for a fixed term by an act of grace by the President. Kazakhstan voted in favour of the UN General Assembly resolution 73/175 on a moratorium on the use of the death penalty, adopted on 17 December 2018, signalling that there is no political will to remove the moratorium. 295  International Commission against the Death Penalty (ICDP), “How states abolish the death penalty”, May 2018, p. 32, <http://www.icomdp.org/cms/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/ICDP-2018-MAYO-PENA-DEMUERTE-V3.pdf>. 56