Considering the increase in terrorist attacks, the legislator has decided to strengthen Luxembourg’s criminal procedure by introducing draft law N° 6921 (“Draft Law”), inspired by Belgian and French Law. This strengthening can be summarised as follows.
On the one hand, with regard to offenses relating to terrorism, financing of terrorism and crimes against state security, the Draft Law provides for the following:
1. In the matter of monitoring and control of all forms of communication, the Draft Law introduces into Luxembourg law the “wiretap of private premises”;
2. The scope of monitoring and control of all forms of communication, including computer data is extended in order to allow these measures to be practised on private premises;
3. The French term “cyber infiltration” is introduced into Luxembourg law, by allowing the investigating authorities to carry out an inquiry to discover offenses relating to terrorism;
4. During the preliminary examination, the investigating authorities have powers of search at any time of day or night;
5. In exceptional circumstances and with a special and motived court order, the duration of the period of retention in matters of offences and crimes is prolonged up to 48 hours.
On the other hand, the Draft Law foresees two other solutions that have a wider scope of application:
The first one concerns all flagrant crimes, and ensures that the Prosecutor General shall be able to track the data or to locate the origin or destination of every telecommunications by a “mini-preliminary investigation” (“mini-instruction”).
The second one concerns offenses, crime investigation, and preliminary examination, and plans to confer to both, the Prosecutor General and the Examining Magistrate, the power to call electronic communication services to identify one of their subscribers, or to identify the electronic communication services themselves. This provision represents a simple and effective procedure, indispensable in matters of prevention of terrorist activity, and also relevant in other criminal matters.
