Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told top...
terrorist attacks resulting in multiple deaths. The current law provides for life imprisonment for terrorist acts leading to the death of a single individual.He said the committee would introduce the draft law to the government and the Supreme Court for approval at the earliest possible date.
It is unclear how an amendment stipulating the death penalty for such crimes would correlate with a moratorium on the death penalty prolonged in November 2009 by the Russian Constitutional Court.
The death penalty was de-facto abolished in Russia in 1996. The country imposed the moratorium after it joined the Council of Europe that year and signed the European Convention on Human Rights, but it has not ratified the document yet.
The Russian parliamentarian said, however, "if such terrible crimes take place, we should propose the society a new variant of criminal punishment, so that people involved in a terrorist attack know what to expect."