MOSCOW. Aug 19 (Interfax) - The head of Russia's oldest human rights organization on Wednesday expressed anxiety over a proposal by President Dmitry Medvedev to limit the jurisdiction of jury-based courts and argued that the jury-based part of the judiciary "exposes the inadequacy of our criminal investigation services."

To remove some categories of crimes from the jurisdiction of jury-based courts "and return them to panels of professional judges means to derail the reform of our judiciary," Lyudmila Alexeyeva, leader of the Moscow Helsinki Group, told Interfax.

Alexeyeva was commenting on a proposal by President Dmitry Medvedev that jury-based courts be barred from some categories of crimes, such as offenses committed by organized crime rings, and that such cases be put under the jurisdiction of courts where the judges make final decisions.

"The jury system exposes the inadequacy of our criminal investigation services. Why do jury-based courts pass acquittal verdicts more often than judges do? Because evidence that is offered by investigators fails to convince juries that the people they are dealing with have truly committed the crime the investigators ascribe to them," Alexeyeva said.

She backed another proposal by Medvedev, a move to ditch the law that prohibits extremism and terrorism cases from being dealt with by a court of a region other than that where such an offense has been committed.

"Regarding changing the territorial jurisdiction of terrorist criminal cases, it is correct. We've been told that in Ingushetia it's hard to form a jury that doesn't consist of relatives or friends. What needs to be done is not to take criminal cases away from jury-based courts but to move a trial from Ingushetia to the Ryazan region and form a jury there, the law permits this," Alexeyeva said.

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