A post is being widely shared on social media claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced the penalty of death sentence for people who are found guilty of burning the Quran in Russia. The post claims that if any person is found guilty of burning a copy of the Quran in Russia, the Russian government is now going to punish them as per the Sharia laws. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Russian President Vladimir Putin introduced a new legislation that imposes the death penalty on individuals convicted of burning the Quran.
Fact: The Russian government did not introduce any such new legislation announcing the death sentence as a punishment for the individuals convicted of burning the Quran. A moratorium on the death penalty as a form of punishment is currently in effect in Russia. In response to the recent event where a 19-year-old youth burned a copy of the Quran in front of a Mosque in the Russian city of Volgograd, President Vladimir Putin recently stated that the offender will be confined in a detention facility situated in Russia’s Muslim predominant regions. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
When we searched to check whether the Russian government issued any such new legislation announcing death sentence as the punishment for the individuals convicted of burning the Quran, we could not find any such information on any official website of the Russian government.
On searching for further sources, we found an article published by TASS, a Russian state-owned news agency, reporting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s latest statement about the detention of a person convicted of burning a copy of the Quran. In response to the recent event where a 19-year-old youth burned a copy of the Quran in front of a Mosque in the Russian city of Volgograd, President Vladimir Putin stated that the offender will be confined in a detention facility situated in Russia’s Muslim predominant regions. Reporting the same, several other news sites have published articles. They can be seen here and here. No news site reported that Putin had introduced new legislation that enforces the death penalty on individuals convicted of burning the Quran.
A moratorium on the death penalty as a form of punishment is currently in effect in Russia. Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin established a moratorium on capital punishment in 1996, which has come into effect after Russia’s constitutional court confirmed it in 1999. Expressing his stance against the reintroducing of the death penalty, Putin recently said, “As for the death penalty, Constitutional Court Chairman Valery Zorkin recently spoke about it at the convention of judges. And he said in response to those who are advocating the reinstatement of the death penalty that in order to do so, the constitution will have to be amended. Therefore, my stance has not changed.”
To sum it up, Russian President Vladimir Putin did not introduce any new legislation that enforces the death penalty for individuals convicted of burning the Quran.
