VIENNA, November 12. /TASS/. By not saying anything about the scandal surrounding a secret prison in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka near Kiev, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and other international bodies betray their own principles, Russia’s permanent representative to the OSCE, Dmitry Polyansky, said.

He recalled that the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights had declined to comment on the scandal, saying the facts were unclear. "This is beyond disgrace. It completely discredits all the principles on which our organization is founded," Polyansky said at a regular meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council, according to a copy of his remarks obtained by TASS.

Polyansky recalled that people had been beaten and held against their will in the secret prison to pressure them into agreeing to be sent to the front, and a 14-year-old was among the victims. No action had been reported against the military personnel involved in the beatings, while a doctor and an ambulance driver who spoke out about what happened were taken into custody, he addded.