ABSTRACT
As a result of the judgment in Öcalan v Turkey1 the use of the death penalty has effectively been prohibited in the whole of the territory of the Council of Europe, with its 47 states and over 811 million inhabitants. When Russia joined the Council of Europe in 1996 it entered into an obligation to ratify Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), prohibiting the death penalty, within three years. President Yeltsin moved swiftly to impose a moratorium on executions (BBC 1999) – in Russia, by firing squad. Russia signed the Protocol on 16 April 1997.2 Yet Russia is the only remaining Council of Europe member state to have failed, 13 years on, so far to ratify Protocol No. 6.
