The Sejm (the lower house of parliament) voted to authorise...

The Sejm (the lower house of parliament) voted to authorise the president to ratify Protocol Six of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, which envisages a ban on capital punishment but allows for the possibility of the death penalty in the case of war crimes. Despite protests from right-wing politicians and opinion polls showing that most Poles back capital punishment, the bill was approved by a vote of 257 to 117 with 33 abstentions. The ratification confirmed that Poland, which halted executions by hanging in 1988, would never reinstate the death penalty. Justice Ministry spokeswoman Barbara Makosa-Stepkowska said, "In practice little will change. Since 1998 our penal code has not envisaged the death penalty. But this symbolic act brings us into a group of modern European states. We are no longer in an infamous group of countries such as Albania, Russia or Turkey which have not ratified the convention."