A coalition of leading Russian NGOs together with the European Prison Litigation Network submitted its observations to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in view of the examination of the implementation of the ECtHR judgement in the case Buntov v. Russia during its meeting on 23-25 September 2019.
The present communication is devoted to the issue of the effectiveness of the current independent monitoring mechanism in Russia. In their Action Plan, the Russian authorities present this mechanism as one of the key and effective tools for ensuring the prohibition of torture in closed institutions in practice.
In fact, the mechanism has been seriously altered over the past three years by replacing its experienced members with ‘front men’. The coalition of NGOs consider it is essential from the point of view of the effectiveness of the prohibition of torture in Russian prisons that the Committee of Ministers takes a very firm position on this subject.
>> See also the communication from the Russian NGO Public Verdict Foundation (19/08/2019) on this case