AFP/Moscow

Russia has begun discussions on whether the death penalty can be reintroduced in January, a move that has wide public support but would contravene its Council of Europe obligations.

The Saint Petersburg-based Constitutional Court started examining whether Russian judges can hand out death sentences once a moratorium on capital punishment lapses in 2010.

The court - which is examining the issue after a request by the supreme court - will have to make its decision by January 1, when the moratorium is due to come to an end.

After the morning session, the president of the court Valery Zorkin declared the hearing closed and said the timing of the court’s decision would be announced at a later date, the Interfax news agency reported.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s representative to the Constitutional Court, Mikhail Krotov, said the Kremlin was in favour of a “stage-by-stage ban” on the death penalty in Russia.

“Abolishing the death penalty is one of the aims of legal and judicial reform,” Krotov told the court, Interfax reported.

Opinion polls have found that a huge majority of Russians support the death penalty.

An online poll by the Moskovsky Komsomolets tabloid in September found that 80% of Russians supported the death penalty.

In 2006, a poll by VTsIOM found that 74% of Russians were in favour of capital punishment. And in 2008, a poll by the same agency found that 30% of Russians would support public execution as a punishment for corruption.

The head of the investigative committee of prosecutors, Alexander Bastrykin, has regularly expressed his support for the death penalty.

“I’ve seen people who will cross any boundary except their own life, and maybe this will stop someone,” he was quoted as saying by Kommersant Vlast magazine yesterday.

The Russian lower house of parliament’s permanent representative to the Constitutional Court called yesterday for an extension of the moratorium.

“The political position of the leadership of the State Duma has been outlined in public speeches,” Alexander Kharitonov told the court.

“For several years the position has been that the death penalty cannot be implemented in Russia,” he added.

Nevertheless, the leader of the far-right Liberal Democratic Party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, told Kommersant Vlast that he supported the death penalty “not only for brutal murders but also for economic crimes that undermine the national interests”.

The Constitutional Court in 1999 ruled that the death penalty could not be used until people all over Russia had access to jury trials. Since then there have been no executions.

The Caucasus region of Chechnya will be the last Russian region to introduce jury trials from January 1, effectively bringing the current moratorium to an end.

Russia is obliged to abolish the death penalty as a member of the Council of Europe.