KEY POINTS:
MOSCOW - The Kremlin and the United States have been accused of flouting international law in a damning new report which tells the depressing and little-known story of seven Russian men freed from Guantanamo Bay.
According to the report by Human Rights Watch, the men were released from Guantanamo without charge and returned to Russia to face a life of torture, harassment, and unfair trials.
All seven were arrested by US forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan during 2002 and only released from Guantanamo in 2004 on the promise that they would receive "humane treatment" on their return to Russia.
Of the seven, all of whom are ethnically non-Russian and come from predominantly Muslim areas, three are in prison, three are in hiding, while the seventh refuses to talk of the ordeals he has endured.
The New York-based rights organisation claimed that Washington knew that the men would face torture at the hands of the Russian authorities but accepted flimsy diplomatic assurances offered by Moscow anyway.
Of the seven Russian nationals sent back from Guantanamo the case of Rasul Kudaev, a resident of the southern Russian republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, is the most shocking.
Kudaev was initially given his liberty by the authorities but in October 2005 he was accused of taking part in an armed uprising in the city of Nalchik, an allegation he denies.
Although he has not been charged, he remains in custody to this day.
When his lawyer visited him in custody she noted that he had to be carried because he couldn't walk and that "his eye was full of blood, his head was a strange shape and size, his right leg was broken and he had open wounds on his hands."
- INDEPENDENT
