Eldar Zeynalov, director of the Human Rights Resource...

Eldar Zeynalov, director of the Human Rights Resource Centre, said that according to data from the Supreme Court a total of 170 people were executed between 1992 and February 1998. Of these 170 people, 27 of them were executed in 1992, 22 in 1993, 23 in 1994, 30 in 1995, 39 in 1996, 23 in 1997, and two people during the first two months of 1998. Apparently, the death penalty was at its peak in 1996. He said that the majority of those executed were political prisoners. On the basis of this data, Zeynalov concluded that the number of capital crimes committed had decreased by 18 to 20 % over the previous years, and that this tendency showed that the death penalty did not influence an increase in the crime rate.