The murder of a schoolgirl in the city of Saratov has sent shockwaves throughout Russia and prompted calls from politicians and the public to lift the moratorium on the death penalty to punish child killers and pedophiles.

The body of nine-year-old Lisa Kiseleva was discovered on Thursday, a day after she went missing on her way to school, prompting a widespread search by the whole community.

The police soon arrested a 35-year-old local man, who confessed that he’d killed the girl because he feared she would tell her parents that he was squatting at a garage.

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When police transported the suspect to the local station, hundreds began protesting and surrounded a vehicle that they thought contained the alleged killer. The crowd demanded that he be handed over to them, to be lynched on the spot. Officers were force to deploy pepper spray.

Calls for the reinstatement of capital punishment immediately began circulating on social media, and the proposal was soon reiterated by lawmakers.

Evgeny Primakov, an MP for the ruling United Russia party, was first to suggest that “capital punishment must be brought back” as chilling reports emerged from Saratov.

The deputy said that he couldn’t understand why taxpayers’ money, including that of the victim’s parents, should be used to fund the criminal’s stay in prison.

He was backed by a host of other parliamentarians, including LibDem leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who expressed belief that “most people in Russia want the return of death

penalty because they see it as an opportunity for fair vengeance. That’s how

human psychology works.”

The head of the Fair Russia party compared the killing of a child to an act of terrorism, saying that “capital punishment would be a fair response to such a crime.”

A poll on the issue was conducted on the State Duma’s page on Russia’s VK social network, in which over 121,000 people took part. Some 80 percent of respondents

said that they supported the reinstatement of capital punishment for child murderers and pedophiles.

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A petition on the Change.org website called for a plebiscite on the reinstatement of the death penalty, and attracted more than 4,700 signatures.

Eventually, the Kremlin had to comment on the question of lifting the moratorium on capital punishment. Presidential press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, clarified that “the issue isn’t being discussed.”

A moratorium on the death penalty was introduced in Russia in 1997 when it joined the Council of Europe. The last death sentence in the country was enforced a year before that.

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