C. Other Laws (some examples)

1. Starting in December 2002, the Federal Law on Burial and Funeral Services prohibited handing over the dead bodies of terrorists to their families and prescribed their secret burial instead. It was the legislators’ reaction to the Dubrovka theater hostage-taking crisis.

This law defined terrorists as individuals "whose criminal prosecution related to their terrorist activity was terminated following their death as a result of such terrorist act being suppressed.” However, one cannot be legally found to be a terrorist outside judicial proceedings.

2. The Federal Law of 22 April 2004 amending the Criminal Procedure Code allowed pre-trial detention of terrorist suspects for up to 30 days without formal charges. All other suspects must face charges within 10 days of their detention, while pre-trial custody may only be used in exceptional cases.

There is an important procedural difference between a suspect and an accused in the Russian law. A suspect has the right “to know what s/he is suspected of," yet it is not necessary to formally document this "knowledge” - if a criminal investigation is triggered by the fact of the crime and not by his/her specific acts, a suspect may only receive a copy of arrest report or a copy of the decision to use detention or any other preventive measures, where the suspected crime does not need to be indicated. In contrast, a document establishing a person’s status as accused must describe the alleged offence, indicating its time and place and any other circumstances which have to be proven. Because a suspect is not officially informed of the charges brought against him/her, s/he is often unable to build an adequate defense strategy. By the new law, a suspect can be held in pre-trial detention center (SIZO) for 30 days and interrogated, while no one is obliged to disclose the circumstances of the case to him/her.

A suspect can be someone arrested under article 91 of the Criminal Procedure Code - grounds for his/her arrest may include the finding of "obvious traces of crime" (such as gun shells) on the person or in his/her home. These provisions make it easy to accuse an innocent individual of a terrorist offense: firstly, law enforcement officers “accidentally” find ammunition on a person; secondly, they suspect him of a recent terrorist attack. The court will order custody, and then the police will "work" the person for a month to elicit evidence fitting exactly the circumstances of the crime they need to investigate.