Kazakhstan abolishes capital punishment

Kazakhstan on Saturday made permanent a nearly two-decade freeze on capital punishment in the authoritarian Central Asian country, AFP reported quoting a notice on the presidential website

According to the notice, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev had signed off on parliamentary ratification of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. 

The Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is a document that commits signatories to the abolition of capital punishment.

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Although executions were paused in the authoritarian Central Asian country from 2003, courts continued to sentence convicts to death in exceptional circumstances, which included crimes deemed acts of terror.

Ruslan Kulekbayev was among the convicts set to be executed if the moratorium were lifted, after he killed eight policemen and two civilians during a rampage in Kazakhstan’s largest city Almaty in 2016. He will now serve a life sentence in jail.