Doc. 8979

9 February 2001

Clemency Commission of the Russian
Federation Presidential Administration

Written Question No. 392 to the Committee of Ministers

by Mrs Wohlwend

      The Clemency Commission of the Russian Federation Presidential Administration is doing important work to humanise the penal and penitentiary systems in the Russian Federation. One specific focus of its work, inter alia, is the conditions of prisoners whose death sentences were commuted by Presidential pardon in 1999. These prisoners are consigned for life to a prison on an island in Vologda. It is reported that they are handcuffed each time they leave their cells and can receive their first visits only after ten years of good behaviour. They have no access to writing materials or regular news from outside.

      The Clemency Commission is trying to secure a review of some of these cases and to soften their conditions of detention. This is part of a broader campaign to change public attitudes to punishment in the Russian Federation, inter alia, with regard to the formal abolition of the death penalty and ratification of Protocol No 6. This three-year campaign was launched at a major conference which the Clemency Commission held with the Council of Europe in Veliky Novgorod in October 2000.

      Mrs Wohlwend asks the Committee of Ministers,

      What it is doing to support the work of the Clemency Commission.

Signed:

Wohlwend, Liechtenstein, EPP/CD