MOSCOW, February 28. /ITAR-TASS/. A package containing three draft laws aimed at expanding the powers of the Federal Security Service (FSB) in the fight against terrorism and toughening punishment for terrorist activities will be adopted soon, one of the document’s authors, the ruling United Russia party’s Irina Yarovaya, said Friday.
Yarovaya, the head of the security and anti-corruption committee of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, also said some amendments had been submitted, which are aimed at making the punishment “more balanced.” The Duma discussed the package in the first reading.
Andrei Lugovoi, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, said the antiterrorism package was “particularly important in the context of what happened in Volgograd and what is currently happening in Ukraine.”
Two suicide bombings left 34 people dead and injured dozens of others in late December 2013 in attacks on a railway terminal and a trolleybus in the southern Russian city of Volgograd.
Ukraine has seen its legitimate president, Viktor Yanukovich, ousted in anti-government protests that took a violent turn on February 18. The latest riots have claimed the lives of over 80 people. Prior to Yanukovich’s flight from his official residence on February 22, radical protesters seized a number of state buildings across the country.
The antiterrorism package was submitted to the Russian State Duma by a group of lawmakers from all parliamentary factions on January 15. The package’s first bill empowers FSB officers to “conduct personal inspections of citizens and stuff they carry” as well as vehicles if there is a suspicion that they are “used with illegal purposes.”
Statutes of limitation would not apply to persons who committed terrorism-related crimes, as well as crimes against peace and security of humankind.
A new corpus delicti is being introduced: organization of terrorism crimes and organization of terrorism financing, which will be punishable by prison terms of 15 to 20 years.
The first bill also envisions the maximum punishment of life in prison for some types of terrorism-related crimes.
The second bill obliges individuals and legal entities to notify the communications watchdog Roskomnadzor of the start of Internet data transfer operations and to keep data on online user activities for six months, as well as to provide the information to state bodies entitled to process it.
The third antiterrorism bill aims to restrict anonymous money transfers with the use of web payment systems.