Mr Putin said that it had become a praiseworthy Russian tradition to receive the world’s leading lawyers. He expressed his hope that their arrival in Moscow for the 10th anniversary of the Russian Constitutional Court showed that the court was now on a par with the other constitutional courts of the world.
Mr Putin paid much attention in his address to the fight against terrorism. He said that contemporary terrorism could undermine the constitutional order of any country. That was why joint search for effective legal methods to combat that evil was among the most essential issues of the day.
He said that Russia had faced organised terrorism and the necessity to fight it while, at the same time, complying with citizens’ rights and personal freedoms—a formidable task—before other countries.
As he saw it, it was extremely difficult to reconcile the fight against terrorism with such compliance, in particular because radicals of every hue and cry and terrorists had learned to mislead the public by using legal norms. In that, Mr Putin stressed, they were pursuing only one end—to destroy the pillars and values of contemporary civilisation, and they were doing it with the utmost cruelty and ruthlessness.
Mr Putin pointed out the importance of constructive team efforts between the Russian judiciary and the European Court of Human Rights. He said that Russia hoped that its possible miscarriages of justice would be pointed out tactfully and professionally, and then the Russian judiciary would correct its mistakes.