Russian envoy demands Guantanamo prison be closed down

[unhappycamper]

http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-russia-guantanamo-20140119,0,3040085.story



Russian envoy demands Guantanamo prison be closed down
By Sergei L. Loiko
January 19, 2014, 10:05 a.m.

MOSCOW -- Russia demanded that the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay be closed down as soon as possible after a Foreign Ministry envoy visited the last Russian prisoner still held there.

"This trip has just fortified our principled position, which coincides with approaches of an overwhelming majority of world community members -- states, international human rights groups, nongovernmental organizations, including those from the United States -- to the effect that the Guantanamo prison should be closed as soon as possible,” Konstantin Dolgov, a human rights envoy with the Russian Foreign Ministry, said Saturday, according to the Itar-Tass news agency.

Dolgov called Guantanamo “a shameful page in the history of the United States, a place where for many years justice has been trampled upon, where human rights and basic freedoms are being violated.”

He spoke at a news conference at the Russian embassy in Washington after returning from Guantanamo, where he visited the only remaining Russian prisoner, Ravil Mingazov, who was detained by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2001.