The Council of Europe’s anti-torture Committee (the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture - CPT) has today issued a public statement on the Russian Federation urging the Russian authorities to take decisive action to eradicate the phenomenon of ill-treatment by law enforcement officials in the Chechen Republic and elsewhere in the North Caucasian region of the Russian Federation, including through the conduct of effective investigations whenever relevant information comes to light.
The public statement is made in application of Article 10 (2) of the European Convention on the Prevention of Torture which provides that the Committee itself may issue a public statement if a Party to the Convention “fails to co-operate or refuses to improve the situation in the light of the Committee's recommendations”.
Speaking as the public statement was released, the CPT’s 1st Vice-President Mark Kelly, who served as Head of delegation during the CPT's 2017 visit to the Chechen Republic of the Russian Federation, said:
“For the CPT, it is of grave concern that, notwithstanding the efforts it has made over the last 20 years, torture of detained persons in the Chechen Republic has remained a deep-rooted problem. This speaks not only to a dereliction of duty at the level of the Republic’s authorities, but also to a failure of effective oversight and control at the federal level.”
