Russians urge reinstatement of death penalty after brutal murder of 9-year-old girl

The murder of a school girl in the city of Saratov has become such shock for Russia that politicians and the public united in calls to lift the moratorium on death penalty to punish child killers and pedophiles

9-year-old Lisa went missing on her way to school on Wednesday, with hundreds of volunteers joining the search for the child. The girl’s body was discovered the next day, hidden at a garage of a 35-year-old man, who later confessed of a murder.

The news caused uproar in the city on the Volga River as people took to the streets and blocked a police car, in which they thought the detained suspect was transported. The crowd demanded him being handed over them to be lynched on the spot, forcing the officers to employ pepper spray.

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MP for the ruling United Russia party, Evgeny Primakov, was first to suggest that “capital punishment must be brought back” as he commented on chilling reports from Saratov. The deputy said he couldn’t understand why should the money of taxpayers, including the parents of the victim, be used to fund the criminal’s stay in prison.

He was backed by a host of other parliamentarians, including LibDem leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who expressed belief that “most people in Russia want the return of death penalty because they see it as an opportunity of fair vengeance. That’s how human psychology works.”

The head of the Fair Russia party compared the killing a child to an act of terrorism, saying that “a capital punishment would be a fair response to such a crime.” 

The State Duma’s page on Russia’s VK social network that launched a poll, in which over 121,000 people took part. 80 percent of them said that they support the reinstatement of capital punishment for child murderers and pedophiles.

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The parliament representatives later clarified that the survey wasn’t ordered by the MPs, but was solely the initiative of the SMM team. “It was just an online poll, but the media made it look like it was a nationwide referendum,” they said.But the call for such a referendum was voiced on Change.org where a petition, urging the organization of a plebiscite on reinstating death penalty already gathered over 4,700 signatures.

Eventually, the Kremlin had to comment on the possible lifting of the moratorium on capital punishment, with presidential press-secretary, Dmitry Peskov, clarifying that “the issue isn’t being discussed.”A moratorium on the death penalty was introduced in Russia in 1997 when it joined the Council of Europe. The last death sentence in the country was enforced a year before that.

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