Kazakhstan abolished the death penalty, making permanent
a nearly two-decade freeze on capital punishment in the
authoritarian Central Asian country, a notice on the presidential
website said Saturday.
The notice said President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev had signed off
on parliamentary ratification of the Second Optional Protocol to
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights — a
document that commits signatories to the abolition of capital
punishment.
Executions were paused in Kazakhstan from 2003 but courts
continued to sentence convicts to death in exceptional
circumstances, including for crimes deemed acts of terror.
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Ruslan Kulekbayev, a lone gunman who killed eight policemen and
two civilians during a rampage in Kazakhstan’s largest city Almaty
in 2016, was among the convicts set to be executed if the
moratorium were lifted.
Kulekbayev will now serve a life sentence in jail instead.
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