Russia would be committing a grave mistake if it reintroduced the death penalty, an adviser to President Vladimir Putin said Monday

 Anatoly Pristavkin, the former head of a presidential pardons commission,  said that Russia's judicial system lacks the independence to safeguard the  rights of suspects facing the death penalty.

 <Politics would play a more important role than the law, said Pristavkin,  who continues to serve as a Kremlin adviser even though Putin dissolved the  pardons commission last year. Putin turned the commission's power to  recommend pardons over to Russia's 89 regions.

 <A lot of judicial mistakes are committed> in Russia, the Interfax news  agency quoted Pristavkin as saying. He said many judges lack the skills  necessary to preside over such serious cases.

 But Pristavkin said he feared that if Russian voters were given the  choice, they would still overwhelmingly support the reintroduction of the  death penalty.

 Russian society has not learned to pardon, but it will eagerly kill,> he  said, according to the news agency. <We are surrounded by hopeless  criminality, and everyone feels in danger outside.> Russia suspended the  death penalty in 1996 to gain entrance to Europe's leading human rights  organization, the Council of Europe. But polls show that most Russians  support the death penalty and some senior officials, including Justice  Minister Yuri Chaika, have called for it to be reintroduced and applied to  convicted terrorists.

 Putin, however, has made clear that he has no plans to lift the  moratorium. He said in July that he believes only <the Almighty> has the  right to take life.

 Executions were a key tool of terror in the Soviet police state. The  disintegration of the Soviet system freed political prisoners, but it also  spurred a rise in violent and organized crime.

 Proponents of the death penalty say it would help stem crime, but  Pristavkin said there was no connection. He cited figures showing that  violent crime decreased after the moratorium on the death penalty was  introduced. Russia experienced 30,000 murders a year between 1990 and 1995.

 That number fell to 28,000 a year after the moratorium was imposed,  Pristavkin said.