Russia"s drug control service wants to strip...
behind a Russian passport to continue trafficking kilograms of drugs unimpeded like he used to," the newspaper quoted a source in the drugs service as saying.Russia"s Federal Drug Control Service believes the initiative to strip former nationals of ex-Soviet states of Russian citizenship can be a useful tool in combating the heroin problem in the country, saying there are currently about a dozen candidates awaiting trial on drug-related charges who could have their Russian citizenship annulled.
However, Human Rights movement leader Lev Ponomaryov spoke against the initiative, saying the law would discriminate based on a person"s ethnicity.
"It turns out that for the same crime an ethnic Russian will just get a prison term, while, for instance, a Tajik would be punished twice - sentenced to prison and deprived of Russian citizenship," he said, adding that it should be down to the police to work more efficiently to tackle the drug problem in Russia.