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Austria Now News – Strasbourg
Russia has formally withdrawn from the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture. According to the Council of Europe, this ends any independent monitoring of Russian prisons, as the Council’s anti-torture committee in Strasbourg can no longer verify how prisoners are treated in Russia, ORF reported.
Withdrawal announced last year
Moscow had announced last year its intention to leave the convention, and the withdrawal has now taken effect. It argued that it could no longer take part in the work of the anti-torture committee after Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe in 2022 over the war against Ukraine.
Russia had been a party to the convention since the late 1990s, but human rights activists have consistently complained of widespread torture and degrading treatment in Russian police stations and detention facilities. Most Ukrainian prisoners of war released in prisoner exchanges have also reported being tortured in Russia.
450 detention sites and reports rarely published
Between 1998 and 2021, the anti-torture committee visited around 450 places of detention during 30 visits to Russia. However, Russia was the only country that almost never allowed the reports of these visits to be published, with the committee publishing reports on only four visits.
After the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine, the committee repeatedly received reports of torture and ill-treatment in Russia and in the Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia, but Moscow did not allow any further visits.
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Sources
- news.ORF.at – Russland offiziell aus Anti-Folter-Konvention ausgetreten – 02.11.2026 – https://orf.at/stories/3446863/
