Vladimir Putin has been urged to restore the death penalty amid open torture of suspects in the Islamic State attack on Crocus City Hall, which included one man having his ear cut off and force-fed back to him.

Senior MPs and other allies of the Russian president have called for a three-decade moratorium on capital punishment to be ditched in the aftermath of the atrocity.

At least 137 people were killed when gunmen burst into the concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow on Friday evening.

The Islamic State terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which was the worst terrorist incident in Russia in over a decade.

Four suspects, all of them citizens of Tajikistan, have been detained. They showed signs of torture when they appeared in court over the weekend.

Footage released on Russian social media showed Russian security officers torturing two of the suspects, including one having his ear cut off and another being subjected to electric shocks to his genitals.

In one video, the suspect named as Saidakrami Murodali Rachabalizod spits as he is fed his own ear. Appearing in court on Sunday, he had a large bandage attached to the right side of his head.

The attack has sparked multiple calls for execution to be restored.

Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president, wrote on his Telegram channel: “Do they have to be killed?” he asked. “They have to be. And will be.”

Vladimir Vasilyev, the head of the United Russia faction in the state Duma, Russia’s lower house, told Russian television on Saturday that capital punishment was being “considered seriously.”

“There are a lot of questions being asked about the death penalty now. This topic will certainly be deeply professional, and meaningful studied…and a decision will be made that will meet the moods and expectations of society,” he said.

Yuri Afonin, the the deputy head of the Duma’s security committee, called for capital punishment to be restored in cases of “terrorism and murder”.

“It is necessary to bring back the death penalty when it comes to terrorism and murder,” Yury Afonin, deputy head of the State Duma’s security committee, said on Saturday.

The Kremlin on Monday, however, said it was not currently considering reintroducing capital punishment.

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said: “we are not taking part in this discussion at the moment.”

Human rights group Gulagu.net, which documents the horrors of Russia’s prison system, said the open torture of suspects reflected changes in Russian society.

‘For more than 10 years, we have been consistently exposing torture and its systemic nature in Russia,” it said. “It is obvious that sanctions for these tortures, as well as for the torture of Ukrainian prisoners, are given from the very top.”

Dmitry Kolezev, exiled editor of Republic media, said:“Torture is, unfortunately, commonplace. What is unusual here is that the security forces used to bashfully hide this. But now they are proud of it and, apparently, they themselves release photographs of torture to friendly Telegram channels.”

Pavel Krasheninnikov, the chairman of the Duma committee on state construction and legislation, told Russian agencies that the debate over the death penalty could be a distraction from the real task of preventing such atrocities from happening again.

“I think it is an important question but not the main one. The discussion launched about the death penalty, it seems to me, may lead us in the wrong direction. We discuss slightly different stories. It is important for us that such acts are not repeated,” he said.

Andrei Klishas, who chairs the analogous committee in the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house, said such a change would require adopting a new Constitution and could not be implemented by either house of parliament.

The death penalty technically remains on the statute books in Russia but has been subject to a moratorium since 1996, when the country joined the Council of Europe.

It is reinforced by a 1996 presidential decree by Boris Yeltsin and a Constitutional Court ruling from 2009.

Mr Medvedev endorsed restoring capital punishment after Russia was expelled from the Council after the full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Emmanuel Macron said Monday that the “particular group” behind the Moscow attack “made several attempts (at attacks) on our own soil”.

The French president said he had intel that the Islamic State (IS) carried out Friday’s attack in a Moscow concert hall, warning Russia against exploiting the attack by blaming it on Ukraine.

Mr Macron said it would be “cynical and counterproductive for Russia to use this context to try and turn it against Ukraine”.