MOSCOW, February 6. /TASS/. Attempts to hush up human rights violations under a pretext of fight against terrorism shed an unfavorable light on both London and Washington, Russian Foreign Ministry’s human rights ombudsman Konstantin Dolgov says in a comment circulated on Friday.
"In recent days Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell, made known new testimonies of Britain’s participation in torture programs at CIA secret prisons outside the United States," Dolgov said speaking about CIA agents’ crimes at the US base on the British island of Diego Garcia.
Wilkerson said the information had been confirmed to him by sources at US special services, including a CIA veteran who had been engaged in the US "global torture program," Dolgov said.
"Human rights activists say that Wilkerson’s statements offer a yet another confirmation of the fact that the British government covers up the truth about its role in CIA programs and tries to avoid responsibility," the comment said.
Earlier, Amnesty International pointed out that the British authorities were soft-pedalling the case and they had instructed the parliamentary committee on intelligence and security to investigate into it, but had preserved absolute freedom for them to conceal the information, the Russian diplomat said.
Wilkerson said that data on Great Britain’s involvement in crude violations of human rights by CIA agents were wiped off a recent report of the US Senate after British officials, with Home Secretary Theresa May on the list, had held 24 rounds of consultations with the senators — authors of the document.
"We believe that attempts to keep on withholding from the international community the gravest human rights violations committed under a cover of fight against terrorism shed an unfavorable light on both London and Washington that continue their blind-alley attempts to preach to the rest of the world how, in their opinion, it should respect human rights," Dolgov said.
"We are confident that to close the case means to bring the guilty to responsibility," he said adding "there is still a long way to go."
Along with this, Dolgov said that the CIA promotes the perpetrators of the torture programs and in Britain Sir John Chilcot’s official inquiry is still some way off from publishing a report on how UK troops took part in the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.