The Council of Europe said Russia's continued refusal...

The Council of Europe said Russia's continued refusal to abolish capital punishment could jeopardise its membership of the human rights and democracy watchdog.The head of the Council's Parliamentary Assembly, Lord Russell-Johnston, criticised Moscow for not fulfilling a promise made in the early 1990s to ban the death penalty that was a precondition of its 1996 entry into the 43-state group. The Assembly's president, also expressed concern over recent calls within Russia to end the moratorium on executions agreed shortly before it joined.