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Party leader calls for lifting death penalty moratorium after terror attack in Petersburg

Vladlen Tatarsky was killed in a blast in a cafe in central St. Petersburg on April 2

LDPR Leader and Russian State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Leonid Slutsky Sergey Fadeichev/TASS

LDPR Leader and Russian State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Leonid Slutsky

© Sergey Fadeichev/TASS

MOSCOW, April 4. /TASS/. Leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) Leonid Slutsky has called for lifting the moratorium on capital punishment following the terror attack in St. Petersburg killing war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky.

"After joining the Council of Europe in 1996, we observed and continue to observe the moratorium on capital punishment. What happened to our comrade, Vladlen Tatarsky (Maxim Fomin), what is going on now on the battlefields of the special military operation is tearing at our heartstrings to revise this norm," he said at a plenary session of the Russian State Duma (lower parliament house) on Tuesday.

Tatarsky was killed in a blast in a cafe in central St. Petersburg on April 2. More than 30 people were wounded. According to Russia’s National Anti-Terrorist Committee, the terror attack was organized by Ukrainian special services. The Russian Investigative Committee has reclassified the criminal case on murder charges as an act of terrorism.

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