The report on “Global practices in relation to secret detention in the context of countering terrorism” is a joint study by the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the Working Group on arbitrary detention and the Working Group on enforced or involuntary disappearances. The representative of the Russian Federation at the UN Council on Human Rights, Vladimir Zheglov, described the report as “confrontational” and said that the document should be removed from the UN’s official website.
The section of the report dealing with the Russian Federation contains summaries of statements, decisions and documents (or links to them) of various international bodies (the Committee for the Prevention of Torture of the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights, the UN Committee on Human Rights, the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Council of Europe). These speak about the practice of detention in secret prisons in the course of the counter-terrorist operation in the North Caucasus, torture and enforced disappearances. The section also includes accounts of interviews with three residents of the North Caucasus conducted by experts who prepared the report.
This review of the system of secret prisons during the armed conflict in the North Caucasus outlines the contours of the criminal practices of abductions, torture, detention in illegal prisons and extrajudicial executions that have become the main methods of conducting the “counter-terrorist operation” in the region.
‘Over the past ten years human rights organizations have published numerous documents confirming the existence of secret prisons. The European Court of Human Rights has handed down dozens of rulings in cases involving disappearance that have proved the existence of secret prisons in the North Caucasus, but Russian authorities continue to deny these facts’, Oleg Orlov, chair of the board of Memorial Human Rights Centre, said in his statement.
