Today the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) has published the report on visiting places of detention of the North Caucasus in spring of 2011. The promulgation of the report became possible due to the appropriate permit from the authorities of the Russian Federation. Besides, Russia took the opportunity to give its comments on this report.

It is recalled that the Council of Europe’s experts’ visit lasted from April 27 to May 6, 2011 and included calling on a number of MIA and FPS bodies of the Chechen Republic, North Osetia and Dagestan.

Thorbjørn Jagland, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, has already made a statement welcoming the steps to openness in human rights sphere taken by the Russian state authorities. However, serious concern about the situation with the illegal actions of the regional “siloviki”(power-wielding authorities) on the detainees and prisoners in the North Caucasus and also with the inefficiency of investigating such facts of cruel treatment is expressed in the report of CPT. Thus the CPT offered a number of recommendations to improve the existing situation.

It’s worth mentioning that during the visit the CPT delegation held meetings as with the representatives of state and power-wielding authorities of the North Caucasus, as with non-governmental bodies including the experts of IRPO «Committee against torture».

Olga Sadovskaya, the head of the International Legal Protection Department of the Committee against torture, emphasized in her comment to the report: “Cannot but please the fact that Russia kept its word given at the UN Committee against torture meeting in December last year and permitted to publish a CPT report for the first time, because such information is confidential and could be promulgated only with the permission of the country visited. All the more so as the situation with human rights in the North Caucasus is quite a delicate matter”.