On December 29, 2005 Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev pledged to eliminate the death penalty...

On December 29, 2005 Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev pledged to eliminate the death penalty in a decree extending the Central Asian country's moratorium on executions that had been in place since 1998. In the decree, Bakiyev gave the government two months to draft a law replacing the death penalty with long terms of imprisonment, including life sentences. Officials said there were about 200 prisoners on death row in the country of about five million people. On December 5, 1998, then President Askar Akayev established a two-year moratorium that was subsequently renewed annually. Akayev’s government fell under a popular revolt sparked by disputed parliamentary elections in February 2005. Akayev’s 15-year rule came to an official end with his resignation as president in April. Acting president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, on April 28, 2005, said that Kyrgyzstan must abolish the death penalty. "I suggest that we consider exclusion of the death penalty clause from the constitution and its replacement with a lifetime sentence," he said at a constitutional conference in Bishkek. Bakiev won a landslide victory in July 2005 polls and took office as president in August 2005.
On October 13, 2005, speaking to members of the Constitutional Council, President Bakiyev called for constitutional amendments that would abolish the death penalty. The Constitutional Council is a body presided over by Bakiyev himself and formed by 289 representatives of parliament, government and civil society. The Council was expected to draft constitutional amendments by the year's end. Very little information is available the death penalty system in Kyrgyzstan as everything concerning it is shrouded in secrecy. There are 35 prisons, only 5 of which can really be considered such. In the Penitentiary Number One in Bishkek, death row is identified by the name "Corridor No. 6" (a throwback to Stalinism). A new Penal Code, which entered into force in January 1998, drastically reduced the number of capital crimes. Only terrorism, treason, premeditated murder, rape, aggravated crimes and certain offences under the Military Penal Code now carried the death penalty. Before 1998, over 30 articles of the former Soviet state’s criminal code prescribed the death penalty.
An amendment to the new Penal Code signed by Akayev on March 23, 2004, further cut capital crimes down to three: aggravated murder, rape of underage children and genocide. On September 8, 2006 Kyrgyzstan's Deputy Justice Minister has said his country will soon abolish the death penalty and replace it with life imprisonment. Addressing reporters in Bishkek, Sergei Zubov said a draft bill to abolish capital punishment had already been sent to parliament. The current maximum jail sentence that a Kyrgyz court can hand down is 30 years. Zubov said the Justice Ministry was seeking to build a new prison facility for 167 inmates currently on death row.