TBT staff in cooperation with BNS
TALLINN - The Harju County Court agreed to the early release of Estonia's first life prisoner, Mikhail Talyshanov.
Talyshanov, 40, who murdered two people in 1990, will be set free after the court ruling comes into effect in 10 days. Talyshanov will then be deported from Estonia to Russia's Kaliningrad region.
The Supreme Court of Estonia, then a republic of the formerSoviet Union, sentenced Talyshanov, a military school cadet, to death in 1991 because of the two murders that shocked the country in summer 1990.
In March 1993, then President Lennart Meri condoned the death sentence to life imprisonment, making Talyshanov Estonia's first life prisoner, but in October 2002 Meri's successor, Arnold Rüütel, granted him a pardon, cutting his jail term to 20 years.
Talyshanov, who has been behind bars since Sept. 1, 1990, would have finished serving his sentence on Aug. 31, 2010, information provided by the Justice Ministry shows.
The Estonian parliament banned capital punishment in 1998.
Comments