20 April 2003, 14:02
Death penalty has been revoked in Armenia
The National Assembly of Armenia passed on Friday a new draft Criminal Code, revoking death penalty. And the document had been passed in all three readings simultaneously.
In the new Criminal Code, which will come in force beginning from the August 1 of the current year, death penalty is substituted for life sentence. And persons sentenced to life imprisonment could count on conditional pre-term release in 20 years.
Death penalties passed on 40 people for grave crimes will be reviewed in compliance with the new code.
However, as one of the movers of the bill, the Councilor of the Chief of the Armenian Police Mikael Grigoryan announced, ?the regulations of the new criminal code on death penalty abolition do not extended to persons who had committed murders under aggravated conditions, acts of terrorism, rapes of infants before the current act came in force?.
By new criminal code, a maximum penalty provided except life sentence is 20 years of imprisonment.
Some hundreds of prisoners are expected to be released since the code will come in force.
The new criminal code does not provide deprivation of liberty for some crimes that were inflicted imprisonment before.
?We have not yet count who many groups of crimes will not be inflicted imprisonment. The very problem of new code passing was of grate interest for us?, Mikael Grigoryan said.
Source: RIA Novosti
