Capital crimes are: premeditated murder, genocide,...

Capital crimes are: premeditated murder, genocide, sabotage, and 8 military crimes.

Kazakhstan is not yet ready to abolish the death penalty. It is also hindered by the attitude of a public opinion inured to the repression of the Soviet era, 50% of which is in favor of the death penalty, above all for particularly atrocious crimes.

Presidential Assistant on Legal Issues Igor Rogov has said that Kazakhstan is in the process of abolishing capital punishment step by step. Although abolition remains a mid- to long-term objective, the country has already taken some significant steps forward with the New Penal Code that came into force on January 1, 1998, in which death-qualifiable offenses, in peacetime, have been reduced from 18 to 3 (see above), and the death penalty is retained also for treason in wartime and for 7 other military crimes.

The reform of the Penal Code has also modified the Commission for Clemency. In principle, the substitution of the death penalty with life imprisonment is envisaged by 2003.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who personally seems to favor retaining the death penalty at least for drug traffickers, has inferred that an offer of international aid for the construction of suitable prisons could well speed up the abolition process.

Yevgeniy Zhovtis, Director of Kazakhstan's International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law said that not more than 100 out of 800,000 prisoners were sentenced to death annually prior to 1998.

In violation of Par. 17.8 of the Document of the Conference on the Human Dimension of the CSCE (Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe) adopted in Copenhagen on June 19, 1990, Kazakhstan does not supply statistics concerning the death penalty.