26 twenty-five to fifty years of imprisonment. In this case, no attenuating circumstances shall be taken into consideration. Accomplices or accessories after the fact shall be punished with twenty to forty years of imprisonment. Those who are sentenced to imprisonment for the crime of kidnapping or abduction shall not be granted a reduction in the punishment for any reason. 62. The phrase “and when this cannot be imposed” refers to Article 43 of the same Penal Code, which establishes that: The death penalty shall not be imposed: 1. For political crimes. 2. When the sentence is based on presumptions. 3. On women. 4. On men over the age of 60 years. 5. On persons whose extradition has been granted on this condition. […] 63. To establish whether the modification introduced by Legislative Decree No. 81/96 to the crime category of kidnapping or abduction entails an “extension” of the application of the death penalty, prohibited by Article 4(2) of the American Convention, it should be recalled that the crime category delimits the scope of the criminal prosecution, delimiting the juridical conduct. 64. The action described in the first paragraph of Article 201 of Legislative Decree No. 17/73 corresponds to the abduction or fraudulent detention of a person for a specific purpose (obtaining a ransom, an exchange for third persons, or other illegal purpose); thus, the crime category basically protects individual freedom. The act embodied in the second paragraph of this Article included an additional element: in addition to the abduction or detention: the death, in any circumstances, of the victim; this protected the juridical right to life. Consequently, there is a difference between simple kidnapping and kidnapping aggravated by the death of the victim. In the first case, the punishment of deprivation of liberty was applied; in the second, the death penalty. 65. Article 201 of Legislative Decree No. 81/96, which was applied in the sentencing of Mr. Raxcacó Reyes, defines a single conduct: abduction or detention of a person for a specific purpose. The act of assassination is not included in this crime category which protects individual freedom, not life, and provides for the imposition of the death penalty on the kidnapper. 66. Although the nomen iuris of kidnapping or abduction remains unaltered from the time Guatemala ratified the Convention, the factual assumptions contained in the corresponding crime categories changed substantially, to the extent that it made it possible to apply the death penalty for actions that were not punishable by this sanction previously. If a different interpretation is accepted, this would allow a crime to be substituted or altered with the inclusion of new factual assumptions, despite the express prohibition to extend the death penalty contained in Article 4(2) of the Convention. ii) Limitation of the death penalty to the most serious crimes