Robert Amsterdam

The Moscow Times is running a piece tonight about critical statements made by the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture regarding Russia's treatment of prisoners. The former Yukos general counsel Vasily Alexanyan, who has been the victim of medical blackmail, is mentioned in the article.

"Unfortunately, there have been severe forms of ill treatment that could be considered as amounting to torture," Latif Huseynov, a representative of the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture, said Monday at a Moscow conference dedicated to preventing the torture of inmates.

On Monday, the committee concluded its 15th visit to Russia since its founding in 1990, visiting Udmurtia and the Arkhangelsk and Vologda regions, Huseynov said.

The CPT's reports on its visits presented to the governments of concerned states are as a rule "strictly confidential," but its public reports mean that "cooperation has broken," with the government of a concerned state, he said.

So far, the CPT has made only five public statements about the results of its visits, two in relation to Turkey and three in relation to Russia in 2001, 2003 and 2007, Huseynov said.