Kazakh Ombudsman Bolat Baikadamov declared it was time...

Kazakh Ombudsman Bolat Baikadamov declared it was time to abolish capital punishment in the country. "There is no room for capital punishment in a civilized country," Baikadamov said at a conference titled "The Abolition of Capital Punishment: For and Against" in Almaty. "The world has come to better appreciate such values as human rights, among them the right to life," he noted. According to scientific data, capital punishment is not capable of deterring potential criminals, Baikadamov said. "Russia and some other countries serve as an example that life imprisonment is a more severe sentence than capital punishment," he stressed. "Life imprisonment is an appropriate sentence for a severe crime," Baikadamov noted. According to the Kazakh International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, some 400 people have been executed over the past nine years. Kazakhstan has a population of 14 million. The international conference on the abolition on capital punishment took place in Almaty on September 30-October 1. Representatives of the Kazakh presidential administration, the government, parliament, the Supreme Court, the Prosecutor General's Office, the Interior Ministry, international experts and members of non-governmental organization took part.