The report alleges that in addition to suspects of terrorism, figures from the political opposition and people blamed for “extremist” activity were also being illegally held in secret facilities.

Aside from Russia, countries on the list included Algeria, Egypt, China, Sudan, and the United States. The vast majority, 55 countries, had only begun secret detentions after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

“Secret detention as such may constitute torture or ill-treatment for the direct victims as well as their families,” says the report. The authors stress that those guilty of such crimes should be held accountable and that their families should be afforded proper compensation.

The true purpose of such secret prisons, the report goes on, is to cover up the fact that detainees are tortured or subjected to other degrading treatment in order to extract information from them; or, alternatively, to keep them quiet.

Secret detentions have been used by Nazi Germany, in the Gulag system of the former Soviet Union, and by the Latin American dictatorships of the 1970s and ’80s, and are in gross violation of the Geneva Conventions, says the report. The authors stress that such detentions are wholly unjustifiable, regardless of allegations by countries that they are an unavoidable necessity for national security.

The report was of particular relevance in light of a dramatic increase in Russian detentions under charges of extremism. Rights advocates have long maintained that legislation from 2002 defining extremism is uselessly vague, giving law enforcement agents free reign to arrest oppositionists and other activists deemed undesirable to the state. In the past few years, extremism charges have been filed against at least one poet, the families of victims in the Beslan school massacre, opposition leader Garry Kasparov, many newspapers, a channel airing South Park, and countless political oppositionists.

A source of significant concern has been the Russian Internal Ministry’s Center for Extremism Prevention (known as Center “E”), which Amnesty International has accused of torture to extract confessions from criminal suspects. Activists say that many of these suspects are arrested on vague or nonexistent grounds, such as in the case of Konstantin Makarov, who was kidnapped and tortured by Center “E” officials in retaliation for organizing an opposition rally last October.

In November, activists from the opposition movement Solidarity obtained an internal police memo indicting Center “E” and other police officials of conspiring to illegally detain activists holding solitary demonstrations in Moscow. Russian legislators began this month to discuss legislation that would greatly hinder activists’ ability to hold such demonstrations, drawing even more scorn from rights advocates that the government was doing everything it could to stifle political dissent.

In releasing their report, the United National Environmental Program has backed the positions of both Greenpeace Russia and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The two eco-watchdogs have mounted a campaign to move both the bobsled complex and the Olympic village away from the undeveloped Ridge. The current construction plan calls for the bobsled track to run along the border of the Caucasus Nature Reserve.

“It is crucial the Russian authorities and IOC [International Olympic Committee] recognize the need to protect Russia’s precious wild habitat and move the Winter Olympics away from the Grushevy Ridge,” said Andrei Petrov of the Greenpeace Russia World Heritage Program. “We are eager to help the Olympic authorities find a site that will not threaten wildlife and promote environmentalism for the Olympic Games in 2014.”

Russian officials have remained cold to the proposals, and to any change of plans for Sochi’s development. “Unfortunately, we have to admit that none of the mentioned organizations has given us a clear response to our proposals,” said Pyotr Gorbunenko, the Executive Director of the WWF.

On April 22nd, Russia’s Natural Resources Minister, Yury Trutnev, pledged that no Olympic sites would be moved in Sochi. “We will solve this problem without relocating facilities,” he told journalists.

A number of Russian civic organizations have petitioned the International Olympic Committee, recommending that the group cancels Sochi’s bid to hold the Olympic Games. They argue that the Committee has ample reason to revoke the bid, and note that the ecological harm done to the fragile Caucasus ecosystem would far outweigh any benefit to the region.

The Olympic preparations have also been mired in controversy for local residents, who say they are being evicted from their homes without adequate compensation.

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Further reading:

Kasparov on Sochi Olympics in the Wall Street Journal

Bush to Meet Putin in Sochi as Thousands Face Eviction

According to the UN Refugee Agency, Iraq maintained its spot as number one on the list. Russia is trailed by China, Serbia and Pakistan. The Agency reported that some 45.2 thousand Iraqis and 18.8 thousand Russians sought political asylum in 2007. This figure counts the number of applications for asylum to 43 industrialized countries, and does not take other migrations into account. In the case of Iraq, some 2 million persons are estimated to have fled to neighboring Syria and Jordan.

The most common destination countries for refugees were the US, Sweden and France. Some 49.2 thousand persons applied for refugee status to the US, compared with 36.2 thousand to Sweden.