On February 11, 2005, the Tajik parliament amended the country’s criminal code and replaced the death penalty with life imprisonment.

On February 11, 2005, the Tajik parliament amended the country’s criminal code and replaced the death penalty with life imprisonment. The new law substituted the death penalty with life imprisonment for males between 18 and 63 years of age; for women, men under 18 and men over 63, the death penalty would be replaced with 25 years imprisonment.
On April 30, 2004 President Imomali Rakhmonov announced in parliament his intention to introduce legislation to halt executions and on May 7, 2004 he submitted a moratorium bill for the consideration of the lower house of parliament. The Majilisi Namoyandagon, on June 2, 2004, unanimously voted for its approval and on July 8, 2004 the Majlisi Oli, the upper house of the bicameral Supreme Assembly, endorsed the bill. The newly-approved law had stayed all death sentences handed down after April 30 and replaced the death penalty with a 25-year prison term.
Tajikistan had taken steps to restrict the death penalty already in June 2003, when the Tajik parliament voted to exempt women and minors from execution and to reduce the number of capital crimes from 15 to five: premeditated murder of two or more people, rape, terrorist acts, genocide, and crimes involving chemical, nuclear or biological weapons. The amendments became law in August 2003. Up to 1998, the penal code had included 44 statutes punishing people with execution.
In line with Soviet tradition, the death penalty was considered a state secret in Tajikistan, making it impossible to determine the extent of the problem in a country where secret executions were known to have taken place following unfair trials in which defendants denounced being subjected to torture. Authorities divulged so little information, that families were often unaware whether their loved ones were still alive or dead.
According to statistics released by the Supreme Court, Tajikistan put 25 people to death in 2002. Throughout 2003 at least 34 people were condemned to death in Tajikistan. Two executions were reported in the media, but the number was certainly higher. No executions were registered in the country in 2004 in the months prior to President Rahmonov’s announcement in April that the death penalty would be suspended.