Belarus may announce a moratorium on the death penalty,...

Belarus may announce a moratorium on the death penalty, or even abolish it, the Belarussian Constitutional Court said.
"The court admitted that some articles of the Belarussian Criminal Code failed to meet the constitution, because they did not indicate that the death penalty was a temporary measure," said Constitutional Court Chairman Grigory Vasilevich.
"The Constitutional Court thinks the chief of state and the parliament may authorize the death penalty's abolition or, as a first step, announce a moratorium," he said.
"The Constitutional Court noted that an increasing number of restrictions on the death penalty was made in the Criminal Code," Vasilevich said.
House of Representatives member Andrei Nareiko, who initiated the appeal to the Constitutional Court, said the ruling made it possible to begin moving towards a death penalty moratorium.
He told Interfax that he would initiate parliamentary debates on the annulment of Criminal Code articles on the death penalty during the spring session. "A death penalty moratorium will settle relations between Belarus and the West and display the republic's striving for international legal standards," Nareiko said.