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Battles over the new Criminal-Procedural Code continue

Izvestia, September 13, 2001, p. 6

Opponents of the new Criminal-Procedural Code, which the Duma is expected to pass in a third reading soon, launched another attack yesterday. Sergei Popov of the Yabloko faction, deputy chairman of the Duma Committee for State-Building, called the Code a "police code". Some of its items and provisions will lead to a further deterioration in the situation with civil rights and liberties. Others impede investigation and leave the guilty immune.

The structures that want the new Criminal-Procedural Code passed did their best to complicate even the reading of the document. Duma deputies received smeared copies of the Code in deliberately small print.

Nevertheless, opponents of the document did notice some truly amazing innovations stipulated by the Code. The Criminal-Procedural Code proclaims the presumption of innocence and at the same time demands that suspects should prove they were not involved in the crime. It postpones for 24 hours consultation with a lawyer, which is required instantly by the Constitution. It isn't hard to see that this is ample time for the law enforcement agencies to "persuade" a suspect to confess everything. Experience shows that judges mostly pay attention to the records of the first interrogations and explanations. Articles 26 and 28 state that people with a criminal record (even if wrongly accused!) have fewer rights than people detained for the first time.

Izvestia, September 13, 2001, p. 6

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