Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday that he would not have introduced the death penalty moratorium in Russia in 1996 but Moscow will stick to its international obligations.
"Those who carried out terrorist attacks must be punished for them, but as for the death penalty, we have obligations," Medvedev said at talks with the leaders of parliamentary parties.
Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov proposed during the meeting that the death penalty be reinstated. Several other lawmakers have made similar suggestions since Monday's bombings on the Moscow metro, which killed 40 people.
"I can say directly: if I was here [in the Kremlin] in the 1990s, the decisions would have been different. But it's useless to talk about it now," he said.
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.
The chairman of the Federation Council's Committee on Legal and Juridical Issues, Anatoly Lyskov, said on Tuesday his committee was working on a draft law which would introduce capital punishment for staging a terrorist attack that results in multiple losses of life.
MOSCOW, April 2 (RIA Novosti)
