General Gennady Troshev, commander of Russia's North...

General Gennady Troshev, commander of Russia's North Caucasus Military District, said life imprisonment is too mild a punishment for Chechen terrorists who have killed dozens of civilians.
"I would hang them on squares and leave them like that for everybody to see," he said.Presidential aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky said activities incompatible with Russian legislation will not be carried out in order to achieve the goals of the anti-terrorist operation in Chechnya.
"Public executions or summary killing are out of the question," he said."The rebels who do not lay down their arms will be killed. Those who surrender or are taken prisoner must face trial," Yastrzhembsky said.
The Chairman of the Russian President's Pardon Commission Anatoly Pristavkin also refuted the idea of public executions of rebels in Chechnya.
"Who will identify them as terrorists?" Pristavkin said. "Thus he may start to slay non-terrorists."
Also Russia has a moratorium on the death penalty, announced in August 1996 as a key requirement in its affiliation to the Council of Europe, he said.
The First Deputy Chief of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff Valery Manilov also opposed the idea of public executions of Chechen rebel ringleaders in town squares.
"Why should we go back to the medieval ages, these are not our methods. We must act on the basis of the law," Manilov emphasized. The ringleaders may be sentenced to the death penalty only if their culpability is fully proven in court, he said.
Vladimir Zhirinovskiy, Russian State Duma deputy speaker for the Liberal Democratic Party, said that terrorists, including Chechens, should be publicly executed in Red Square or the Luzhniki stadium in Moscow. "I fully agree with the opinion of all our military about the situation in the Caucasus and we have been suggesting such public executions for a long time," he said.
He also suggested hanging the terrorists in public and showing the executions broadly to the whole country. "And we need no recommendations from the Council of Europe or from our own politicians opposed to the death penalty," he said.
Russian human rights ombudsman Oleg Mironov condemned Troshev's statement.
"There can be no execution on the spot and public executions in Russia, because our country is a legal democratic state," Mironov said.
Vladimir Kalamanov, the Russian president's human rights envoy in Chechnya, said "I believe that the position of the Russian Federation had been identified several years ago when it joined the Council of Europe. Calling a halt to the death penalty and later banning it altogether is a component of a democratic society and those principles that we now upheld. European standards are the basis for us."
Sergey Kovalev, a State Duma deputy, opined "There is no sense in commenting on Troshev's statement. It speaks for itself. Its monstrous illegality is obvious."
Dmitriy Rogozin, the head of the Duma international affairs committee, sharply criticized the recent statements by General Gennadiy Troshev.
"The military should keep their mouth shut, it is the politicians' job to comment on events," Rogozin told the press. The military's job is "to fulfil the will of the president and to perform their direct, military duties," he said.