Russian officials visit Guantanamo, call the prison “black page in the history of the US”

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WASHINGTON (VR) –  After years of negotiations, high ranking representatives of the Russian Foreign Ministry and the General Prosecutor's office were allowed to visit Guantanamo prison.
The purpose of the visit of the delegation led by Foreign Ministry's Commissioner for Human Rights, Konstantin Dolgov, was to meet with the Russian citizen Ravil Mingazov held at the prison and insure his release in the shortest possible time. After a press conference held at the Russian Embassy upon return to Washington, Mr. Dolgov gave an exclusive comment to Radio VR:

“It was quite a useful meeting with Ravil Mingazov – it was a main goal of our visit to Guantanamo prison. We had quite an extensive discussion with him for an hour and a half. His reaction was ultimately quite positive, he gave very high assessment of importance of our meeting and spoke highly of the policy of the Russian government towards its citizens as the protection of the legitimate rights and interests of our citizens abroad. Mingazov understands that his life matters to the Russian government. We assured him that we will continue to try to secure his speediest release from Guantanamo so that he can resume normal life as a Russian citizen.”

“This man has passed through difficult times – I think that all detainees of Guantanamo are very emotionalized because of the conditions under which they are being kept – lack of due legal process or access to fair trial. It influences the mentality – and it was visible that Mingazov passed through difficult times.”

“The most important thing now is to secure his release. We assured Mingazov that we will continue to ensure his legitimate rights while he is still in prison. We will help him with access to Russian literature – embassy in Washington has given him the books through the lawyers and he also wants an access to Russian TV channels that he was denied yet. We have talked to the military command of the prison and we asked them persistently to tackle his basic needs and to take care of his legitimate rights and we keep it under tight control.”

“Guantanamo is a gloomy place to begin with, and we have been reaffirmed in our position that this prison has to be closed as soon as possible – this is black page in the history of the US, and it doesn’t do any good to the international image of the United States. There are violations of human rights, basic freedoms and international law as well. The mere fact of the existence of this prison is a violation of international law.”
“We have definitely not seen everything in Guantanamo – we’ve only seen whatever our hosts wanted us to see. The visit was useful because we conveyed certain messages – concerning our citizens and on the necessity to close this prison as soon as possible.


We have been given assurances that Obama administration will continue to move towards this end. We think that they have to move more insistently, more actively – while talking to the US Congress, which is taken rather negative position on the transfer of the detainees to the am soil. Also they have to talk more actively to foreign governments in order to encourage them to accept in their territory 155 detainees that are still there.”