Russian Ambassador to Tanzania Doku Zavgayev expressed...

Russian Ambassador to Tanzania Doku Zavgayev expressed certainty that two Russian citizens, Ivan Ochirov and Dmitry Kosyakov, sentenced to death for killing in 1997 a Russian teenager, fourteen-year-old Alexei Sotnikov, on Zanzibar (in the composition of Tanzania) will not be executed. He said the two Russian citizens might be extradited to Russia. "They cannot be executed as the moratorium on death penalty is operating in Tanzania," the ambassador said.
He said that in answer to the note of the Russian embassy, Zanzibar President Amani Abeid Karume assured him that the Russian citizens would be spared. The ambassador recalled that on April 23 Zanzibar's Court of Appeal annulled the May 2001 decision of Zanzibar's Supreme Court sentencing the two Russian citizens to 15 years of deprivation of freedom for manslaughter. A more rigorous sentence was passed, capital punishment for murder in the first degree.
The question of the extradition of the convicts to Russia may be raised, Zavgayev said. He said the Russian side is ready to issue such a petition. The ambassador said the mother of one of the convicts made a plea to the commission of the Court of Appeal that the latest decision be revised. Ochirov and Kosyakov are now held under a milder regime. Their parents have been permitted to hand over parcels of food to them and they are now given better medical attention.