MOSCOW, January 29. /TASS/. Russian Human Rights Ombudsperson Tatyana Moskalkova has said that the execution of a prisoner in the US using pure nitrogen demonstrates the catastrophic human rights situation in the country.

"The overseas guardians of rights and freedoms are very fond of teaching the whole world how human rights should be valued and respected. We have just recently found out how they honor themselves, unleashing and supporting wars around the world, and how they put their own citizens to a torturous death. All this is evidence of the catastrophic situation with human rights in the United States," the ombudsperson wrote on her Telegram channel.

Moskalkova noted that even "dutifully following the double standards of the collective West, the UN" reported that such a method of capital punishment "is tantamount to torture" that "leads to an agonizing and humiliating death."

Moskalkova also recalled that Russia has long observed a moratorium on exceptional punishment, while "the citadel of freedom and democracy" has been practicing as many as five types of execution: hanging, firing squad, electric chair, gas chamber and lethal injection, while now there are six of them. "We categorically reject such legalized barbarism," Moskalkova added.

The US state of Alabama executed a prison inmate, Kenneth Smith, using pure nitrogen for the first time on January 25. He was convicted for the contract killing of a woman in 1988. Along with his accomplice, he received $1,000 for the murder. The accomplice was executed in 2010. Alabama correctional authorities also attempted to execute Smith himself by lethal injection, but he survived the botched execution attempt last year. Execution by pure nitrogen is authorized in three US states but had never been used before this occasion. Alabama authorities only authorized the method in 2018 due to a shortage of the drugs used in lethal injection executions.