Turkmenistan bars courts from imposing death sentences

Turkmenistan barred its courts from imposing death sentences through a law signed on 6 January 1999. The prohibition applied from the start of the year and extended the moratorium to people already sentenced to death, offering protection in a country that had executed people for drug trafficking.^[1][2]

Drug convictions had led to executions

Amnesty International’s report reviewing 1996 described reports of 123 executions solely for drug trafficking. The authorities published no official statistics on executions, and Amnesty feared that the total across all offences was higher. It called for complete abolition of the death penalty.^[2]

The January law took effect upon adoption. It told courts how to apply the presidential moratorium and specified what should happen to people already sentenced, giving the change a direct role in sentencing and prison custody.^[1]

The reported drug executions form the background to the later reform: drug cases could carry a punishment that left a convicted person’s life at stake.^[2]

The protection covered existing death sentences

President Saparmurat Niyazov signed the moratorium law on 6 January. It directed courts to stop imposing death from 1 January and expressly extended the protection to people sentenced before the moratorium began.^[1]

Those already sentenced were to be sent to correctional colonies and held under the conditions used for prisoners in special-regime colonies. The law therefore addressed both future sentencing and the custody of people already facing execution.^[1]

For prisoners and their families, the protection reached beyond the next trial. A death sentence imposed before the new year also came within the moratorium’s coverage.^[1]

Full abolition followed that December

On 28 December 1999, Turkmenistan abolished the death penalty. The national Ombudsman’s account of the reforms places the January moratorium and the December abolition within the same year’s changes to protection of life.^[3]

Together, the two reforms removed execution from the country’s punishments, including the drug cases that had featured in Amnesty’s earlier reporting.^[1][2][3]

Drug supply still carried long prison terms

Later criminal legislation retained substantial punishment for drug offences. The replacement code taking effect in 2023 set five to twelve years for ordinary unauthorised supply, with fifteen to twenty-five years in its highest tier.^[4]

The Turkmenistan profile follows the separate rules for possession, cultivation and supply that remained after capital punishment ended.