Russia's Foreign Ministry lambasted the U.S. on Thursday over a Senate study on torture techniques used in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, urging human rights organizations to campaign for Washington's full disclosure of its controversial practices in its War on Terror.
The study's content is "shocking," Konstantin Dolgov, the Foreign Ministry's commissioner for human rights, democracy and rule of law, said in a statement Thursday. "The declassified information is yet another confirmation of American authorities' systematic gross violations of human rights."
Published on Tuesday, the 525-page Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA's detention and interrogation program — which led to the brutal treatment of suspected terrorists and produced little valuable intelligence — sent shockwaves through American society and around the world.
Dolgov, who has lashed out at Washington in the past for what he described as double standards in reprimanding Russia and other countries for their human rights records, added that the study raised questions about criminal liability for the nations that agreed to the creation of secret prisons.
"We urge the human rights community, and relevant international organizations and structures, to get Washington to disclose information about the entire spectrum of offenses committed within the framework of the 'global War on Terror' and bring perpetrators to justice," he said.
Dolgov tweeted Tuesday that these practices had been "known to everyone long ago" and that the Obama administration's outlawing of torture had been overshadowed by its reluctance to punish those "responsible for perpetrating gross human rights violations" in U.S.-run secret detention centers.
"This situation does not match claims that the United States is a 'standard of democracy,'" Dolgov said in the statement, referring to the still-active Guantanamo Bay detention camp. "This is far from reality."
