Communist Party deputies agree with Kolokoltsev on death penalty
MOSCOW. Feb 11 (Interfax) - The Communist Party deputies in the State Duma agree with Interior Ministry Vladimir Kolokoltsev on the need to introduce the death penalty for especially grave crimes.
"I fully back the interior ministry's opinion and want to say that the Communist Party faction has the same position on this matter. We have been demanding for more than ten years that the moratorium on the death penalty be lifted," Alexander Kulikov, deputy chairman of the State Duma committee on civil, criminal, and arbitration legislation, told Interfax.
"We have finally heard the interior minister make a sensible statement on the need to restore the institution of the death penalty in the country. Despite all public statements made by the country's leaders, crime experts believe that the crime rate has been on the rise for the past few years, and that can't be denied," Kulikov said.
Kulikov disagrees with the people who oppose the return of the death penalty, who believe that it will not bring the crime rate down and will not stop people from committing especially dangerous crimes. "It's not so," Kulikov said.
Kulikov recalled that the death penalty was abolished in the Soviet Union after the victory in the Great Patriotic War, and the decision was followed by a sharp increase in crime. "The country was only able to overcome that tendency when the death penalty was re-introduced in 1953," the parliamentarian said.
Kulikov also recalled that the death penalty is still practiced in some states in the United States. "We should finally realize that we were wrong to declare a moratorium on the death penalty when Russia entered the Council of Europe, assuming that obligation under pressure from the international community," Kulikov said.