ISTANBUL

Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov on Wednesday ordered the drafting of a bill which would reintroduce the death penalty in the country for heinous crimes against women and children

Japarov's press secretary, Asgat Alagozov, said in a statement on US social media company Facebook that the president instructed the head of the Kyrgyz presidency’s legal support department to draft legislative amendments providing for the “most severe penalties” for crimes against women and children.

“In particular, this concerns the introduction of the death penalty for the rape of children, as well as for the rape and murder of women,” Alagozov said, noting Japarov believes that crimes against women and children in particular “should not go unpunished.”

An initiative to amend the country’s criminal code has been separately published on the government portal for public discussion of draft regulatory legal acts.

According to the document, the initiative seeks to introduce the death penalty for murder committed with “particular cruelty,” the murder of a minor, and murder involving rape or other violent sexual acts.

The initiative comes in the wake of a high-profile murder case involving a 17-year-old girl who was murdered in late September. According to the country’s Interior Ministry, investigators determined the girl was sexually assaulted and then strangled to death.

The suspect, a previously convicted man, was later detained in Bishkek. Alagozov noted that the case is under the personal supervision of Japarov himself.

The death penalty was suspended in Kyrgyzstan in 1998 following a moratorium, and was formally abolished in 2007 when it was replaced by life imprisonment.