III. RELEVANT DOMESTIC LAW

A. Code of Criminal Procedure (Law no. 174-FZ of 18 December 2001)

82. Article 24 sets out the grounds for discontinuation of criminal proceedings. Paragraph 1 (4) specifies that the proceedings are to be discontinued, in particular, in the event of the suspect or defendant’s death.

83. Article 42 defines a “victim” as an individual who has sustained physical, pecuniary or non-pecuniary damage as the result of a crime. The decision to recognise the individual as a “victim” must be made by the examiner, investigator, prosecutor or court.

B. Rehabilitation Act (Law no. 1761-I of 18 October 1991)

84. According to the preamble, the purpose of the Rehabilitation Act is the rehabilitation of all victims of political repression who were prosecuted on the territory of the Russian Federation after 7 November 1917, and restoration of their civil rights. Political repression is defined as any measure of restraint, including a deprivation of life, which was imposed by the State for political motives (section 1). Section 3 describes the categories of persons who are eligible for rehabilitation; section 4 contains the list of criminal offences, such as high treason, espionage, violence against prisoners of war, murder, robbery, war crimes, crimes against humanity, in respect of which no rehabilitation is allowed.

C. Classification of information

85. Section 7 of the State Secrets Act (Law no. 5485-I of 21 July 1993) contains a list of information which may not be declared a State secret or classified. The list includes in particular information about violations of rights and freedoms of individuals and citizens and information on unlawful actions by the State authorities or officials.

86. On 2 August 1997 the Government adopted the Regulation on preparing State secret information for transfer to foreign states and international organisations (no. 973). It provides that a decision on transferring such information may be made by the Russian Government on the basis of a report prepared by the Inter-agency Commission on the Protection of State Secrets (§ 3). The recipient party must undertake an obligation to protect the classified information by way of entering into an international treaty which would establish, among other matters, the procedure for transferring information, the confidentiality clause and the dispute resolution procedure (§ 4).

D. Criminal Code (Law no. 63-FZ of 13 June 1996)

87. Chapter 34 contains a list of crimes against peace and security of humankind. Article 356 prohibits in particular “cruel treatment of prisoners of war or civilians”, an offence punishable by up to twenty years’ imprisonment.

88. Article 78 § 5 stipulates that the offences defined in Articles 353 (War), 356 (Prohibited means of war), 357 (Genocide) and 358 (Ecocide) are imprescriptible.

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 669