MOSCOW, July 5 (UPI) -- Human rights watchdog Amnesty International has condemned alleged kidnappings and torture at the hands of Russian security agencies, officials said.
Amnesty International issued a report Wednesday that said Russian and other former Soviet republics have been involved in abductions, illegal extradition and torture of suspected Islamic extremists from central Asian countries, RIA Novosti reported.
The group said when human rights groups and the European Court of Human Rights step in to stop such actions, "cynical subversions of international law" such as disappearances and abductions are carried out to secure extraditions.
"Twenty years after the break-up of the Soviet Union, old collegiate ties, common institutional cultures and the shared perception across the region of the threat from Islamist extremist groups bind together the successor institutions to the Soviet KGB," said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International's Europe and Central Asia Program director.
Russian authorities have not yet commented on the allegations made by Amnesty International.
