Moscow Officials Visit Gitmo to Free Russian Detainee from Legal Vacuum
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - A delegation of Russia’s high-ranking diplomats and representatives of the judicial system has in an unprecedented move visited the Guantanamo Bay prison, as Moscow has stepped up efforts to secure release of the only Russian national there.
The Russian VIP visitors were toured around the facility, where they spent several hours Friday, speaking to senior representatives of the Department of Defense and the commanders of the detention center.
The central part of their visit was an hour-long conversation with the Russian national, Ravil Mingazov, who has been detained for over a decade at Guantanamo without charge.
Russian Foreign Ministry's Commissioner for Human Rights, Konstantin Dolgov, said the delegation’s basic aim was to ensure Mingazov’s “speediest possible release.”
“His presence at the Guantanamo prison by itself is violation of his basic rights, because all of the detainees are kept there in the so-called legal vacuum,” Dolgov told RT by telephone. “There is no due process, no proper investigation. They are denied access to fair justice.”
The human rights commissioner said he assumed the prospects for achieving Mingazov’s release were good.
He said the detainee asked for books and newspapers in Russian. Dolgov, however, would not go into detail about what Mingazov said, when asked to describe conditions at the center. The diplomat only said the delegation was analyzing the information it received.
The information on life inside Guantanamo keeps flowing in from the lawyers of the 155 detainees, still held at the facility. According to attorneys, the number of hunger strikers at the prison has gone up in the past month, and now stands at 33.
The US military who run the facility have refused to release any updates, as it did during the massive months-long hunger strike last year, RT reported.
