RUSSIA-EXECUTIONER  Russian executioner has no regrets, loves animals  

By Tara FitzGerald  MOSCOW, Jan 30  - Vasily has no regrets about his old job as an  executioner, but still cannot bring himself to slaughter animals on his  small farm.

 Out of work since 1996, when Russia stopped enforcing capital  punishment, he told the weekly Argumenti i Fakti that for many of his 25  years on the job even his close friends and family did not know what he was  doing.

 "I was doing my duty," he said of the 50 convicts he had shot in the  back of the head with a pistol. "I have no regrets." When he quit, he  wrote in his resignation letter: "Execution by shooting is no longer  practised. Society no longer has need of my profession." The death  penalty is still on the books in Russia, but former President Boris Yeltsin  ordered a halt to executions in 1996.

 The Constitutional Court also ruled that courts could not hand down  death sentences as long as some Russian regions had juries and others did  not. But that hurdle is set to vanish this year when reforms set up jury  trials countrywide.

 Public opinion overwhelmingly favours capital punishment, and death  penalty opponents worry that the Yeltsin-era moratorium may not hold up.

 "I confess that each execution left a bitter after-taste.

 Death was passing through me," Vasily said. "Now at last it is possible to  sleep easily and not torment myself with thoughts that I have become a  murderer." Vasily, whose surname was not given and who was pictured with  his eyes blanked out and holding a shotgun, said he had been motivated by  both the desire to punish and to fulfil his professional duty.

 "Before each execution, according to instructions, I studied thoroughly  the criminal case. To shoot or not to shoot? Every executioner had to decide  that question for himself," he said.

 "At times you read the sentence and your blood runs cold.

 (But) sometimes it was enough to look the person in the eyes and all became  clear -- one wanted to send those monsters to hell." Vasily, who now  lives and works on an allotment with his wife, son and daughter-in-law, said  that it was difficult for him when he first left his job as an executioner.

 "First I couldn't help thinking: it was a dirty job, but it was a job,  and I lost it. Then I realised that I had exchanged prison barracks for  something much better," he said. "I built a house from red brick and I have  a little plot," he said.

 "But I have one little problem -- I can't bring myself to slaughter a  pig or kill a chicken. So I make my son do it. And he laughs and says,  'Father, you're such a little softy.'"