The State Duma approved a change in the territorial jurisdiction of terrorist cases

State Duma deputies adopted a law to increase the number of courts that will have jurisdiction over cases of crimes related to terrorism.

Now such cases in Russia are distributed among four courts: 1st Eastern, 2nd Western, Central and Southern District Military Courts. The amendments also extend this right to all district (naval) military courts within their jurisdiction. First document makes appropriate changes to the law “On the territorial jurisdiction of district (naval) military courts”, and second – in the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation.

Author of laws wrote “Vedomosti” is the Supreme Court, which indicated in accompanying documents that a significant number of criminal cases by the 1st Eastern and 2nd Western District Military Courts are considered in mobile court sessions in the territories of the regions of the Russian Federation, which are subject to the jurisdiction of other district military courts.

During the period from 2020 to 2022, the 2nd Western Court reviewed 592 cases. For the same period, 1st Vostochny – 286 cases. In addition, the authors of the project calculated how much time judges spent over two years on considering these cases outside their permanent location: in total, judges of the 2nd Western and 1st Eastern spent 1,674 working days.

The judicial workload on military courts when taking into account mobile hearings also entailed additional financial costs. Their size for 2020–2022. amounts to more than 122 million rubles. The adoption of the law, according to the RF Supreme Court, will optimize the workload on judges, reduce the time required to consider cases and save budget funds.