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/CORRECTION*/DEATH PENALTY: Beslan Massacre at the Core of Russian Debate
By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Apr 10 (IPS) - The only hostage-taker to survive the Beslan school tragedy has received unlikely support in his bid to avoid the death penalty: a group of parents whose children died in the September 2004 attack.
Shortly after public prosecutors requested the death penalty for Nurpashi Kulayev, The Voice of Beslan organisation sharply objected. The parents' group said Russia should keep in place a 10-year moratorium on capital punishment made when the country joined the Council of Europe. A court will decide Kulayev's sentence in July.
"We do not want to become barbarians in response to barbarity. We do not support deputy prosecutor general Nikolai Shepel... in his call for... the death penalty," says a statement signed by committee head Ella Kesayeva.
Kulayev was among the 30 kidnappers who seized the elementary school in southern Russia at the start of its new academic year in 2004. More than 330 people, half of whom were children, died during the siege.
The attackers took the school to pressure authorities to withdraw federal forces from the autonomous Chechnya republic. Students, teachers and parents were held for three days without food or water. Many perished in an explosion detonated by the rebels. Others died from gunfire between the captors and Russian military when government special forces began rescue operations.
Kulayev, a 25-year-old Chechen carpenter, proclaimed his innocence in his final statement at his Feb.16 trial at the North Ossetian Supreme Court in Vladikavkaz: "I would like to give my condolences to everyone who lost their family members. I lost relatives myself for eight years. But I am not guilty."
While The Voice of Beslan made its plea for Kulayev, another parents' group, Beslan Mothers Committee, said it would insist on death for the militant and called for a national referendum to lift the death penalty moratorium. Moreover, they want to reopen an investigation of the hostage crisis and punish officials responsible for what they see as a bungled hostage release operation.
Without a referendum however, the death penalty will not be easy to impose on Kulayev, parliamentarians and human rights activists said. Russia agreed to begin the process of prohibiting the death penalty when it joined the Council of Europe a decade ago. Though it has not done so completely, it has placed a moratorium on executions. It is the only member of the Council of Europe that does not prohibit the death penalty.
A June 2005 report by the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly found there had been "very little progress" on Russia's commitment to the formal abolition of the death penalty.
Before joining this European body, there were 716 convicts on Russia's death row. Russia halted executions, although courts continued to hand down death sentences.
>From 1989 to 1991, 470 people were given death sentences and 228 were executed. But between 1992 and 1995, the number of executions fell to 10 per year. This was possible, in part, because of legislative changes that allowed death sentences to be commuted to life imprisonment. In 1995, when the moratorium was put in place, the president pardoned only five of 91 death row inmates who petitioned for clemency.
Death penalty abolition advocates hope Russia's presidency of the Council of Europe's committee of ministers this year will help persuade State Duma legislators to abolish capital punishment completely.
"We have examined the case and acknowledged the fact that the militant group's aim was to cause instability and social chaos in the region. But under the present circumstances our membership in the Council of Europe does not permit us to kill the remaining culprit. It's simply impossible and impermissible because the parliament has adopted a bill that confirms the abolition of death penalty," Duma legislative committee chairman Pavel Krasheninikov told IPS.
"It was an emotional tragedy but we have to act within some framework of the law in order to avoid being expelled from the Council of Europe," he added.
The court is expected to issue its sentence in July. Prosecutors should insist on life imprisonment for Kulayev, Krasheninikov said. Human rights advocates agree.
"If one follows the mood and attitudes of the general public, which readily endorsed the death penalty, Russia would have to lose its membership of the Council of Europe," Alexander Petrov, deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Russia, told IPS.
"Reintroduction of the death sentence as the severest form of punishment in Russian society, even for most terrible criminals, would not conform to modern democratic ideals," he added. "We believe instead that authorities should take measures to provide adequate security and be able to prevent terrorist attacks in the future."
The newly-created Public Chamber also expressed alarm over the public prosecutor's call for the death penalty, saying that authorities would be reversing to a primitive society by allowing the this maximum punishment.
It is important that the country's judicial institutions operate independently without any influence from other branches of the state, says Grigory Tomchin, an executive member of the Public Chamber and president of the Foundation to Support Legislative Initiatives.
"Society gives everybody certain basic rights - such as the right to life - and limitation should not be placed on people's rights. Taking away the life of a person does not really constitute punishment for a crime," Tomchin told IPS. "It's a senseless form of action to be meted out for a crime."
The sentiments expressed by the Beslan Mothers Committee could put on pressure for harsh punishment decisions, but civilised society should ignore their demands, he suggested. Instead, society should heed the call of The Voice of Beslan and stop the barbarity.
(*This updated and corrected version replaces the story DEATH PENALTY: Beslan Mothers Make Plea for Militant's Life, moved on Mar. 27.)
(END/2006)
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