MOSCOW, December 6 (RAPSI) – A planned amnesty for thousands of people convicted of non-violent crimes is expected to go to Russia’s State Duma next week, Kommersant daily reported Friday.
More than 30,000 people, including 1,300 currently serving prison sentences, could receive amnesty under a proposal to mark the 20th anniversary of the adoption of Russia’s Constitution.
High-profile cases involving the punk band Pussy Riot, former Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky, opposition leader Alexei Navalny and the “Arctic 30” activists from Greenpeace will be excluded from consideration, according to the newspaper.
But it said that the amnesty could apply to several people accused of involvement in violence that broke out at an anti-Kremlin rally on Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square in May 2012, on the eve of Vladimir Putin’s inauguration as president for a third term.
Putin discussed the draft amnesty Wednesday at a meeting with Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin and the chairman of the Kremlin human rights council Mikhail Fedotov. It is expected to go to the Duma on Monday, December 9.
“I agree with your suggestion in general. We will refine this document along with the State Duma lawmakers and I’m asking you to join in the work as actively as you can,” Putin told Fedotov and Lukin.
According to the president, there would be no amnesty for people who had committed crimes against representatives of the state, primarily law enforcement officers.
Kommersant reported that the list of offences excluded from the draft decree includes hooliganism under aggravating circumstances, the charge facing the Greenpeace activists and for which Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina are serving two-year jail sentences.
Embezzlement, for which Navalny received a suspended sentence in October, and money laundering, for which Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev were jailed, are also among the excluded crimes, the newspaper said.
The amnesty would focus largely on people convicted of minor and medium-level offenses, particularly children, mothers with underage children, pregnant women, women over 55, men over 60, and certain disabled people, according to the report.
People who had committed serious and especially grave crimes, as well as individuals convicted of intentional crimes more than twice, would not be considered.
