Statistics do not reflect the real level of the terrorist threat in Russia, the prosecutor general said on Wednesday.
In a report to the upper house of the Russian parliament, Yury Chaika said terrorist attacks are often "veiled" as other categories of crime.
One reason for that, he said, were the 2006 amendments to the Russian Criminal Code allowing terrorist acts to be classed as killings or attempts on the life of law enforcement officers.
"This makes it possible to artificially camouflage them [terrorist acts] as general felonies," he said, adding that amendments seeking to rectify the situation had already been sent to the Russian president.
Chaika said the situation was made worse by widespread "falsifications" of statistics on the part of law enforcement agencies, aimed at improving "clear-up rates" and padding statistics.
He cited the practice where confessions to crimes are attributed to dead people and unsolved crimes are closed for no good reason, but are reported as solved crimes. He said the prosecution system was currently conducting a wide-ranging probe into such practices.
The prosecutor general said that terrorist attacks in the North Caucasus are often not property investigated and are not infrequently attributed to dead militants who may or may not have been responsible for them, but no conclusive evidence is provided in any case.
However, Chaika praised the efforts of law enforcement agencies in the North Caucasus.
"In 2009, more than 400 gang members, including 40 gang leaders, were neutralized and 600 members of the underground network detained, and large amounts of weapons and explosives were seized," he said.
Nevertheless, he said the level of the terrorist threat in Russia remained high.
MOSCOW, April 28 (RIA Novosti)
