 MOSCOW (AP) - Russian law enforcement agencies have tortured three former Guantanamo inmates and subjected them and four others to continual harassment and abuse, a U.S.-based rights group said in a report Thursday. Human Rights Watch urged the United States to do more to protect the rights of terrorism suspects subject to extradition, saying it should not transfer people to countries where they may be tortured.
| So we can't keep them in Gitmo, we can't return them to the shithole countries from which they came because all of them are likely to torture the mooks, and we can't release them into the wild so that they can be terrorists again. Hmmm, there is one solution left ... |
Allison Gill, Moscow director for the rights group, said three of seven men who were released from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in 2004 have been beaten and tortured. All have suffered from detention and other forms of harassment by authorities, especially from the Interior Ministry and the Federal Security Service, she said.
| Tusk, tusk, my heart pumps peanut butter for them ... |
The report said four have been forced into hiding. Russia's Interior Ministry declined to comment on the accusations. The Federal Security Service, the KGB's main successor agency, also refused immediate comment.
| And they won't ever comment, ever. |
One of the former detainees, Rasul Kudayev, has been held in custody in the North Caucasus city of Nalchik on charges of participating in the October 2005 attack by hundreds of militants on police and government buildings.
| So he's been a bad boy ... |
Kudayev's lawyers and relatives say he was beaten while in custody to extract confessions and a regional court has ordered prosecutors to probe those allegations.
"We asked all the guards if they've beaten this vicious terrorist, yer honor, and they all said, 'no'!"
"Thank you, that settles it!" |
Kudayev's mother Fatima Tekayeva told The Associated Press in a phone interview that her son was repeatedly beaten. "I saw traces of the beatings on his body with my own eyes," she said.
| He'll get over it, unlike his dead victims ... |
Two others, Ravil Gumarov and Timur Ishmuratov, were sentenced last year to sentences of 13 and 11 years, respectively, for blowing up a natural gas pipeline after having been acquitted in an earlier trial.
| And they weren't even Bugtis ... |
Human Rights Watch said the trial was unfair and that the two men were beaten in custody until they confessed. Gumarov was deprived of sleep for about one week and kept in a small cage, his hands handcuffed over his head, the group said.
Four others - Rustam Akhmyarov, Shamil Khazhiyev, Ruslan Odizhev and Airat Vakhitov - are in hiding, according to activists. Reached by telephone, Vakhitov declined to disclose his location, but told the AP he was "in my motherland."
| "And thanks for blowing my cover!" |
"I am the only one who hasn't had a case fabricated against him and who is walking around alive and free," Vakhitov said. "I don't feel safe in this country."
| So the terrorist is, well, terrorized. Warms the deepest cockles of my heart, it does ... |
The seven were detained by U.S. forces in Afghanistan on suspicion of fighting for the Taliban. They were released from Guantanamo Bay in 2004 and some were briefly jailed upon returning to Russia before being released after investigators said they found no evidence of Taliban involvement. Rights activists said the treatment of former Guantanamo detainees was part of a broader pattern by Russian authorities targeting heavily-armed pious Muslims with concocted criminal investigations or illegal coercion.
| I'm sure the FSS isn't above concocting whatever it needs on someone, but it doesn't sound like they have to try too hard with these boyz ... |
In its report, Human Rights Watch urged the United States to stop relying on diplomatic assurances of fair treatment by governments when extraditing terrorism suspects and to not transfer people to countries where they may face torture.
| Instead, we should send them home with HRW representatives. |
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