Kazakh ombudsman Bolat Baykadamov voiced an initiative...

Kazakh ombudsman Bolat Baykadamov voiced an initiative to abolish capital punishment in the country. "There is no room for capital punishment in a civilized country," Baykadamov said at a conference, held in Almaty, entitled "The Abolition of Capital Punishment: For and Against". "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, Baykadamov 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," Baykadamov noted.