On Friday, the deadline for collecting amendments to the second reading of the bill banning the election to the State Duma of persons involved in extremist and terrorist organizations ends. Oppositionists and lawyers criticized this document for blurring the concept of ownership and giving the new norms retroactive force. On May 14, the head of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation Andrei Klishas also called for a “substantial revision” of the draft. However, in the official response of this committee, published on Thursday in the Duma database, the senators only propose to specify the criteria for a person’s involvement in an extremist organization, and the emergence of a norm on retroactive force of the law is called justified.
Amendments to the law on elections to the State Duma, developed by a group of deputies headed by the chairman of the commission for combating interference in the internal affairs of the Russian Federation, Vasily Piskarev (United Russia), the chamber is considering in an accelerated manner. The document submitted on May 4 was adopted in the first reading on May 18, the deadline for collecting amendments ends on May 21 at 10:00, and the second reading of the bill is scheduled for May 25. The head of the State Duma Committee on Control and Regulation Olga Savastyanova told Kommersant that the committee received amendments from Senator Klishas and Chairman of the Duma Committee on Legislation Pavel Krasheninnikov, but did not disclose their content.
Recall that the authors of the bill proposed to prohibit persons involved in the activities of extremist organizations (the prosecutor’s office is now seeking such a status for the structures created by the politician Alexei Navalny), from being elected to the State Duma for five (for leaders) or three (for ordinary participants and those who provided organizations financial or “other” assistance) years from the date of entry into force of the court decision to ban the organization.
At the same time, the law may have retroactive effect, that is, those who were related to these structures for one to three years before they were recognized as extremist will fall under the new ban.
According to critics of the document, this is contrary to Art. 54 of the Constitution, which says: “No one can be held responsible for an act that at the time of its commission was not recognized as an offense.”
However, the relevant committee of the Federation Council felt differently. His response (.pdf) signed by Andrei Klishas says that there is no contradiction with the Constitution, since it is not “about establishing additional responsibility, but about limiting the rights of individuals.” At the same time, Mr. Klishas recommended to the Duma to soften other provisions of the draft law: “We believe that in order to exclude the unjustified extension of the proposed restriction to persons in whose actions there are no signs of the unlawfulness of the act, the criteria for a person’s involvement in extremist activities and a terrorist organization should be specified.” As of May 20, 2021, 33 organizations were recognized as terrorist in Russia, and 83 as extremist.
Sergei Ivanov (LDPR), a member of the State Duma Committee on Legislation, who earlier sharply criticized the document, told Kommersant that it was pointless to amend the second reading. “Should I prescribe one year instead of three years? This will not change the concept, it is still illegal and unconstitutional, ”he said.
The deputy reacted skeptically to the position of the senators, explaining that for him Andrei Klishas “died as a lawyer after the amendments to the Constitution.” “Isn’t deprivation of the right a punishment? In the Criminal Code there is a punishment in the form of deprivation of the right to hold a certain position for a certain period. A State Duma deputy is an elective state office of category A, ”he summed up.
“Of course, we are well aware that this bill has passed through the presidential administration and has apparently already found some kind of preliminary approval. Naturally, Klishas cannot express any other position, ”Yuri Sinelshchikov, First Deputy Chairman of the Legislation Committee (KPRF), told Kommersant.“ But the principle written in Art. 54 is very important, because we are talking about a law that aggravates responsibility. Is there no additional responsibility here if consequences such as deprivation of political rights occur? “
Yevgeny Korchago, chairman of the Korchago & Partners Bar Association, saw in the senators’ response concern about the unreasonable spread of restrictions:
“We are used to the fact that the chairman of the committee, Klishas, usually advocates stricter regulation and the so-called tightening of the screws. However, certain provisions of the withdrawal indicate that Klishas was concerned about the possibility of unjustified extension of the alleged restrictions to persons involved in the activities of extremist and terrorist organizations. It is rightly indicated in the review that the proposed version of the bill lacks clear criteria for assigning citizens to this category. I hope that this review will be taken into account in further work on the text of the bill and all the necessary changes will be made. “
“At first there was a feeling that Klishas wanted to play something back, but, as we can see, no,” says Aleksandr Verkhovsky, director of the SOVA center (included in the register of foreign agents). “True, he writes that there can be no restrictions without proof involvement in extremist activities. But this is a dead end: if a person is involved in extremist activity, then he is involved in some kind of offense and, in theory, he should be brought to court, and not restricted in his rights. ”
The expert also draws attention to the phrase from the review that sanctions cannot have retroactive effect, and here we are not talking about punishment, but about the restriction of rights.
“The logic is this: this is just a new limitation, which is not related to guilt. But this is, of course, strange. It turns out that the restriction is imposed on people not for guilty actions, but simply just in case, for security reasons, ”says Mr. Verkhovsky.
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