funky station

This is a scenario I saw happen the other week or so when observing a round, and I'm curious what the official admin stance on this is since the observers all spectating seemed very divided whether this was considered a violation of the rules or not and were debating it extensively.

For quick context, what happened was a thief was conclusively discovered as being a thief by the head of their department. In order to avoid word getting out that they were a thief and getting arrested, they slept the department head with nocturine, stripped them of their headset, locked them in a box, then ordered a borg they had EMAG'ed earlier to weld the box shut and to throw them into space, thus attempting to RR them and prevent being outted as a thief.

The big thing everyone was discussing when that happened was the pacifism implant itself. Some people were insisting that the pacifism implant not only applies to direct violence, but also indirect violence/harm, and that anyone with the pacifism implant would be incapable of even conceiving of the idea to get an outside actor to do harm on their behalf, and that getting someone to do such would be a violation of the rules. Others were insisting that the pacifism implant only applies to direct violence, and that killing someone via proxy is not a violation of the pacifism implant.

Now granted, thieves aren't supposed to be killing people in the first place as they have no direct objectives for it, and it's kind of the main gimmick of the antag role, so normally this isn't an issue to begin with. So that leads me to two questions here:

1) Does the pacifism implant restrict a thief from only direct violence, or does it also restrict violence by proxy and prevents a thief from trying to get someone else to impart harm for them, on their behalf?

2) Since thieves are supposed to be thieving, and not killing, is a thief directly arranging for someone else to be killed, whether RR'ing them or not, considered valid gameplay for a thief when done directly in the pursuit of accomplishing their thieving objectives (either to obtain objective item(s), or to prevent being caught with/discovery of said item(s))?

Let me preface that I am not ruling on this situation directly, as that would require us to be able to view the situation in it's entirety. If you would like you may submit the round number in a ticket for review. I'll instead be treating the facts you outlined here as a hypothetical, and what my ruling would be in that case.

1: We expect thieves to treat the implant on a roleplay level as well as a mechanical one. Meaning that they cannot incite direct harm even through actions that the game permits. They are not allowed to steal someone's hardsuit in space, tell an emagged borg to harm someone, or try to get other people to kill someone.

2: No, thieves are a nonviolent antag, and thus are not allowed to try and kill people in furtherance of their objectives.

As a third point, unrelated to your question, even if the person here as a traitor, and not a thief, the events you describe would still not be allowed. You are certainly allowed to kill people who might blow your cover, but due to our rules surrounding losing your memories upon death, there is no need to RR. Therefore antags are typically not permitted to RR people that aren't a named target in their objectives, with some minor exceptions.