Lithuanian legislators are seeking to expand law enforcement powers to restrict the rights of individuals linked to organized crime.

The new bill, officially called the Law on Prevention and Control of Organized Crime, provides no fewer than nine measures intended to curtail a person's right to liberty, property and privacy.

Measures are severe

The courts will be able to prohibit someone from contacting the persons specified, changing their place of residence (with a requirement to be present there at the time specified), going to a specified area or driving vehicles, and they will also be able to set a requirement to inform an officer of deals worth more than 1,500 euros.

Furthermore, the courts will able to order the seizure of assets, oblige a person to declare their assets and prove their legitimacy, temporarily prohibit a person from carrying out any particular activity or order that a person be monitored electronically (tagged).

According to Karolis Liutkevičius, a legal expert from the Human Rights Monitoring Institute, while in terms of severity these measures are equivalent to those used in criminal proceedings, at the same time they lack any of the latter's procedural safeguards for the protection of human rights:

"They are to be applied when persons fail to heed the warnings given to them by law enforcement to not break the law. It is unclear why, in the given circumstances, law enforcement authorities would simply not start a pre-trial investigation," said Liutkevičius. "Furthermore, the bill provides a 'simplified' procedure for applying these measures, but lacks any safeguards against abuse, for example, by specifying that the measures in question should only be used in exceptional circumstances."

Can't complain

According to Liutkevičius, the greatest problem with the bill is that people would not be able to avail themselves of the rights and guarantees available to them in criminal proceedings, such as the right to interpretation and translation, the right to state-guaranteed legal aid, the right to give evidence and others.

The law would allow the authorities to seize a person's property, but, again, this measure lacks the appropriate procedural safeguards prescribed by criminal law. Officers would also be able to film, take pictures and biometric data of the persons subjected to control measures (an official warning or a court order).

"Again, if we judge by content, these are indeed measures of coercion that are used in criminal proceedings, but, contrary to the Code of Criminal Procedure, a person has no ability to challenge them and thus cannot defend his or her rights," noted Liutkevičius.

The bill contains one other worrying provision: it states that if a person fails to show up to a court hearing concerning a court order, the court must order his temporary detention for up to 48 hours. "The court has no discretion with respect to detention - it must be ordered in all cases," said Liutkevičius.

The Human Rights Monitoring Institute and the Lithuanian Centre for Human Rights both urge the Human Rights Committee to reject the bill.