Free Republic

Russia has called on the United States to punish those responsible for the use of “inquisition-style” interrogation methods in the “global war on terror”, as revealed in the US Senate report on torture this week. Konstantin Dolgov, the human rights ombudsman of Russia’s foreign ministry, said the results of the “shocking” report were “the latest confirmation of gross, systemic human rights violations by the American authorities”. .... The Senate report showed that “prisoners in secret torture chambers were subjected to inhuman, humiliating treatment” including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and threats against suspects’ families in order to “beat confessions out of often...

MOSCOW (CBS St. Louis/AP) — The violent protests in Ferguson, Missouri, reflect simmering U.S. tensions over racial discrimination that could undermine the country’s stability, a senior Russian diplomat said Tuesday. The comments by the Russian Foreign Ministry’s human rights envoy, Konstantin Dolgov, were among the sharpest from a foreign official as images of violent protests in Ferguson topped newscasts around the world. The protests came after a grand jury’s decision not to indict a white police officer in the killing of an unarmed black man, 18-year-old Michael Brown. “The developments in Ferguson and other cities highlight serious challenges to the...

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on coercive tactics betrays intelligence officials and will erode their trust in future presidential administrations, a former CIA official who oversaw the agency’s enhanced interrogation program said Sunday. Jose Rodriguez, who headed the agency’s counterterrorism section and its clandestine service, said that the Senate report “throws the CIA under this bus.” He predicted that intelligence officials would be undercut by “second-guessing” from the White House and Congress and warned that allied nations that have cooperated with U.S. intelligence in the past might reassess their aid. …