MOSCOW. Aug 2 (Interfax) - Russian journalists will have to go to the European Court of Human Rights increasingly more often, said Oleg Panfilov, the head of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations (CJES).

"Over the past five or six years, Russia has become the world leader in terms of the number of criminal cases opened against journalists, with over 50 such criminal cases annually, plus another 5,000-6,000 civil cases in which journalists are defendants," Panfilov told Interfax on Thursday.

"As courts in Russia are controlled by bureaucrats, journalists will seek justice in Strasbourg, and the number of their complaints to the European Court of Human Rights will be growing," Panfilov said.

Panfilov welcomed a recent ruling by the Strasbourg Court, in which it acknowledged that three Russian journalists - Viktor Chemodurov, who was earlier found guilty of insulting Kursk Governor Alexander Rutskoi after several years of judicial hearings, and Viktor Dyuldin and Alexander Kislov, who were found guilty of insulting Penza authorities in their open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin - were held liable unlawfully.

"Certainly, this is good news. At the present time, we know already four instances when the Strasbourg Court found Russian journalists to be in the right," Panfilov said.

Elaborating on prosecutions of journalists in Russia, Panfilov also pointed out that earlier they had mainly been charged with libel, but "in the last half a year, journalists have been actively accused of extremism."

"This is exactly what we were afraid of when the legislation on countering extremism was being adopted," he said.