President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed the abolition of the death penalty. – Sputnik / SIPA
The Kazakhstan abolished the death penalty, after a moratorium on executions in force for nearly 20 years in this authoritarian country in Central Asia, the presidency said on Saturday. According to a notice published on his official website, the head of state Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has signed the ratification of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This text, ratified last year by the Kazakh Parliament, obliges its signatories to abolish the penalty capital within their borders.
Executions had been suspended in Kazakhstan since 310. Courts nevertheless continued to sentence defendants to death for exceptional crimes, including those judged to be terrorism. A man who killed eight police officers and two civilians during a carnage in the country’s largest city, Almaty, in 2003, had thus been sentenced to death. This sentence is now converted into a life sentence.
As big as four times France, Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic, count millions of inhabitants. In the former USSR, only Belarus continues to apply the death penalty regularly. Russia abolished it de facto, without explicitly banning it.