Doc. 11302 Report 8.3. Alleged secret detentions in Grozny 342. Another allegedly illegal prison in the Chechen Republic – located in Grozny, the capital of the Chechen Republic – is under discussion before the Sub-Committee on Human Rights. Prompted by a publication of the Russian human rights group, Memorial293alleging the destruction of evidence concerning acts of torture and enforced disappearance by the destruction of a former school building, which had until recently housed a notorious detention centre of the Ministry of the Interior of the Chechen Republic, the sub-committee asked the Russian general prosecutor’s office for explanations. The building was razed to the ground within hours of Memorial going public with its findings of damning inscriptions on the walls of cells and other evidence collected on the premises, which Memorial documented on video to the extent possible. The explanations given to the sub-committee in the prosecutor general’s reply of 11 September 2006 were not considered satisfactory by the sub-committee. Its additional questions of 12 October 2006 were answered on 21 May 2007. I prefer not to comment on these replies now, as they are yet to be discussed by the sub-committee.294 343. Whilst I am not in a position to draw any final conclusions from the as yet incomplete information presented above, regarding the razed detention centre in Grozny, there no longer seems to be any doubt, in the light of the CPT’s public statement, that persons had been detained secretly in Tsentoroy.295I also cannot help noticing the general lack of transparency permeating detentions in the North Caucasus characterised by thousands of disappearances that are still not elucidated, especially in cases where there are indications that one or the other of the state institutions responsible for law enforcement was involved. In several recent decisions, the European Court of Human Rights has condemned the Russian Federation for failing seriously and effectively to investigate such cases.296 344. As a confidence-building measure, I propose that the Assembly invites the Russian Federation to fully publish the CPT’s reports and to work closely with this body to stamp out the practice of secret detentions from its territory, including the North Caucasus. 9. Need for consensus solutions to the HVD dilemma whilst ensuring respect for human rights 345. The typical response from members of the Bush administration when confronted with reports on the impact of United States’ policies in the context of the “war on terror” is two-fold. First, they will state that the criticisms are overstated and counter-productive;297second, they will complain that the authors of such reports make little effort to propose viable solutions to what they see as an intractable dilemma: how do we target, capture, detain and “bring to justice” the people we suspect of being “high-value” terrorists? John Bellinger tends to pose a simple question to his European counterparts: “I guess I ask you, what is the solution to this problem?”298 293. Human Rights Centre Memorial, May 2006 (on file, English version provided by International Helsinki Federation, Vienna, on 14 June 2006, complete with transcription of wall inscriptions, and photographs taken by Memorial); see also “Unofficial Places of Detention in the Chechen Republic”, International Helsinki Federation, Vienna, 15 May 2006 (addressed to me shortly before the publication of the June 2006 Interim Report) http://www.ihf-hr.org/viewbinary/ viewdocument.php?download=1&doc_id=6810. 294. The topic was last on the sub-committee’s agenda on 18 April 2007; on the same day, the Russian delegation informed the sub-committee’s chair that no reply had yet been received from the general prosecutor’s office. The subcommittee therefore postponed consideration of this matter “for one last time”. A reply was received by the subcommittee’s chair on 21 May 2007. 295. See Public Statement, paragraphs 28 and 29 (supra note 289) and p. 24 of document CPT/Inf (2007)17, quoting from an official reply by the Russian authorities: “In the course of the investigation it was established that on the night of 7 November 2004, ‘D’, a member of an armed group (gang), was detained in the Khasavyurt district of the Republic of Dagestan by officers from the ChR President’s Security Service and taken to the Security Service base in Tsentoroy. On 8 November 2004 he was transferred to Gudermes ROVD.” 296. Akhmadova and Sadulayeva v. Russia (10 May 2005), Application No. 40464/02; Bazorkina v. Russia (27 July 2006), Application No. 69481/01; Baysayeva v. Russia (5 April 2007). 297. See John Bellinger, Chief Legal Adviser to the United States Secretary of State, and Dan Fried, Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs; Joint Briefing to European Delegation during the visit of the TDIP Temporary Committee of the European Parliament to Washington DC, 11 May 2006 (hereinafter “Bellinger, Briefing to European Delegation, or Fried, Briefing to European Delegation”). Assistant Secretary of State Fried told the delegation: “The undisciplined public discussion, unbalanced by unintelligent conclusions from responsible people such as yourselves can have an unintended consequence of making it more difficult to work effectively to the benefit of your governments and your societies as well as ours.” 298. Bellinger, Briefing to European Delegation, ibid. 66