MOSCOW, October 6 (Itar-Tass) —— The Liberal Democrat party’s deputies in the State Duma suggest tightening punishment for crimes that were committed by persons with special martial arts skills.
The authors of the proposed amendments to the Criminal Code are Yaroslav Nilov, Sergei Ivanov and Maxim Rokhmistrov. They sent the bill to the government of the Russian Federation and the Supreme Court for an official reply, the press service of the Liberal Democrat faction told Itar-Tass.
"Some athletes during the training process often undergo social and psychological deformation of the character (consolidation of activity, determination, willpower and commitment), which is accompanied by related manifestations of permissiveness and aggression," the legislators say. They quoted their own statistics related to criminal activity among young martial arts athletes - racketeering - 35 percent, bullying - 30 percent, theft - 40 percent, sports fraud - 30 percent, and usury - 15 percent.
"Possession of martial arts skills is, in fact, tantamount to the use of weapons, which they (athletes) employ deliberately and ruthlessly, using the advantage over other people and hoping for the protection of their sports associations and coaches, who are able to find numerous mitigating motives for the crime," the explanatory memorandum to the bill says.
In this regard, the authors propose to include in the Criminal Code a new article, "Murder of or injury by a person with special physical or athletic training in martial arts." Part one envisages punishment for killing another person: imprisonment for a term of 10 to 15 years. The second part provides for punishment for causing serious harm to another person, if the crime was committed with particular cruelty, out of selfish motives or for money, combined with the robbery, extortion or robbery, as well as for reasons of political, ideological, racial, ethnic or religious hatred. Such crimes will be punished by a prison term of 7 to 12 years with a fine of up to 1 million rubles.
In addition, the Liberal Democratic Party finds it necessary to supplement the relevant article of the Criminal Code with a new aggravating factor - "crime a person with special physical or athletic training in the martial arts of power."
The legislators made it clear that their initiative is directly linked to the tragic incident of 15 August, when college student Ivan Agafonov took a heavy blow from athlete Rasul Mirzaev near a nightclub in central Moscow. The young man was taken to hospital in a serious condition and died the morning of August 18.