Wants to change the law to get revenge: “Kill them all”

The suspected terrorists appeared half-broken in court.

Now Russia is investigating whether to reintroduce the death penalty.

– They will die. Kill them all, says Putin top Dmitry Medvedev.

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Eleven people have so far been arrested for involvement in the attack in Moscow on Friday that killed 139 concertgoers.

Russian state media stated on Monday that the death toll may increase further. 182 people are still being treated in hospital.

Putin wants answers

President Putin has now said for the first time that it was “radical Islamists” who carried out the terrorist attack. However, he continues to hint at links to Ukraine.

– We know which hands carried out these atrocities against Russia and the Russian people. Now we want to know who ordered it. We need answers to many questions, such as whether radical and terrorist-linked Islamist groups are really interested in attacking Russia, Putin said during a televised cabinet meeting on Monday.

The president said the terrorist attack “fits logically” with Ukrainian military attacks along the Russian border and the Crimean bridge, writes the Washington Post.

Ukraine has categorically denied any involvement in the attack.

Considering the death penalty

The four suspected shooters, all citizens of Tajikistan, were arrested after a 30-mile escape during Friday night. On Sunday, they appeared in court with all sorts of injuries.

One of them was wheeled into a wheelchair and seemed half gone. Another reportedly had an ear cut off.

In the Russian leadership, many now want to go further to get revenge.

After many calls for Russia to reinstate the death penalty, Vladimir Vasilyev, group leader in the parliament of Putin’s United Russia party, now says that the proposal should be considered.

– There are many questions about the death penalty now. This must of course be studied in depth, professionally and meaningfully, he says in a television interview according to the Washington Post.

“Kill them all”

– And a decision that responds to the public’s mood and expectation will be made.

Dmitry Medvedev, former president and prime minister and current vice chairman of the National Security Council, wants deadly revenge.

“They are caught. Well done to everyone who helped catch them. Should they be killed? he asks in a post on Telegram.

“They should and must. But it’s even more important to kill everyone involved. All. Those who paid, who sympathized with them, who helped them. Kill them all”.

RT director Margarita Simonyan, one of the Kremlin’s main propagandists, thinks that the terrorists rather deserve something “worse than death”.

“Too mild”

“I look at these faces and feel that the death penalty is too lenient,” she writes.

She advocates “lifelong penal servitude somewhere underground without the possibility of ever seeing daylight again. With only bread and water, with a ban on talking to anyone and with not so humane guards”.

Reintroducing the death penalty would, at least on paper, require rewriting the constitution.

But opposition politician Boris Vishnevsky says that such a detail only stops a country “ruled by laws”.

Can find an opportunity

– If the president decides to implement this, I think they will find an opportunity to do it, just like before, he says to the Washington Post.

Kremlin spokesman Dimitriy Peskov stated on Monday that “the Kremlin is currently not participating in the discussions regarding the death penalty”. He also did not want to comment on whether the arrested terrorists had been subjected to torture.

The then Soviet Union abolished the death penalty in 1966.