All news

Russia draws OSCE’s attention to human rights violations by Ukraine and US

Secret CIA prisons were uncovered in some OSCE member states, the diplomat stressed

WARSAW, September 12. /TASS/. The Russian delegation pointed the attention of the participants of the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting to the disregard for human rights in Ukraine and in the US, said representative for the Legal Department of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service Vladislav Smirnov on behalf of Russia on Wednesday.

Examples of disregard for human rights in Ukraine "are raising serious concerns," he said. "We should note that basic guarantees are not applied to people who were placed under arrest on charges of committing crimes regarding the armed conflict in southeastern Ukraine. Crime victims report that, as a rule, they are first held in custody in secret detention facilities, where they are interrogated for several days, ahead of being transferred to penitentiary system facilities. That said, victims mentioned beating, tortures with current electricity, staged executions, suffocations, intimidation and threats of the use of force," he said.

The Russian representative named a special prison in the US naval base in Guantanamo - "in which 40 prisoners, most of whom have been there for more than 10 years and are being held in complete legal vacuum, without any placed charges, and are being tortured" - as an example of rude and systematic violations of human rights.

"The unlawful practice of the US authorities affects other countries as well. Secret CIA prisons were founded in some OSCE member states, where basic international standards of jurisdiction and prisoner treatment were rudely violated. Those responsible for the creation of these special prisons were not brought to account, despite the corresponding decrees of the European Court of Human Rights," he noted.