Russian Duma extends moratorium on death penalty

MOSCOW, Dec 8 (Reuters) The Russian parliament today effectively extended a 10-year moratorium on the death penalty by three years to 2010 by putting off the introduction of juries in the courts of the restive republic of Chechnya.

Capital punishment has become a hot topic in Russia, torn between international commitments to scrap it for good and pressure from influential hardliners who are likely to use the issue in campaigning before parliamentary elections next year.

The lower house of the State Duma gave its final approval today to a bill under which juries will replace traditional panels of three professional judges in Chechnya from 2010, rather than 2007 as was initially planned.

Russia, which still has capital punishment in its criminal code, has observed a moratorium on carrying out death sentences since 1996.

Three years later the Constitutional Court ruled that no court could sentence criminals to death until all of them had switched to jury trials. Chechnya remains the last region with no juries because of technical problems, officials say.

''The introduction of the new law means that for another three years courts will not have the right to impose death sentences,'' a senior Communist deputy, Viktor Ilyukhin, told Reuters after the Duma vote.

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