The Russian Defense Ministry has announced that on Wednesday 248 of its service members have been released from Ukrainian captivity. Kiev has claimed that 230 of its personnel have been exchanged with Moscow. The swap of captured personnel was the result of a “complex negotiation process” facilitated by the “humanitarian mediation” of the United Arab …
Read More »Russian military confirms major prisoner exchange with Ukraine
A total of 110 Russians have returned home from Ukraine as part of a major prisoner exchange with Kiev, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Monday. The group included 72 civilian sailors who had been held in Ukraine since February 2022, it added. In exchange, Moscow released 108 female soldiers …
Read More »Russia makes prisoner swap proposal to US – CNN
Moscow wants Vadim Krasikov, a Russian national convicted of murder in Germany last year, to be included in a potential prisoner exchange with the US, CNN reported on Friday, citing multiple people familiar with the matter. The channel reported earlier that the US was willing to swap Viktor Bout, who …
Read More »Russia responds to hype over US prisoner swap offer
There have so far been no tangible results in negotiations on swapping prisoners with the US, the Kremlin and Russian Foreign Ministry have said. The comments were made in response to a claim by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who said on Wednesday that Washington had made a “substantial …
Read More »US offers prisoner swap to Russia
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday that the US has made a “substantial offer” to Russia to secure the release of basketball player Brittney Griner and convicted spy Paul Whelan. According to a CNN report, the offer involves trading Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout for the two …
Read More »Ex-CIA director watched torture of prisoner – NYT
Former CIA Director Gina Haspel watched as a prisoner was tortured by interrogators at a Thai black site that she ran for the agency in 2002, the New York Times reported on Friday. As chief of the CIA base in Thailand in late 2002, Haspel personally observed interrogation sessions in …
Read More »Russia comments on Ukrainian prisoner exchanges
Prisoner exchanges are the purview of the military, which means that any possible requests to swap Ukrainian captives from the Azovstal plant in Mariupol, for Russian POWs, would have to go through the defense ministry, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday. And when asked by journalists about jailed Ukrainian …
Read More »Tied up naked and starving for 3 days – ex-Palestinian prisoner on Israeli jail
Prisoner advocacy groups say female Palestinians face a wide range of human rights violations in Israeli jails. Earlier in December, three female Palestinian prisoners – Shorooq Douyat, Marah Bakir, and Muna Kaadan – were brutalized and thrown into solitary confinement, according to Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, an organization representing political prisoners. …
Read More »‘Thought I was going to die’: Gitmo prisoner who aided Al-Qaeda testifies gruesome details of CIA’s interrogation torture
The 41-year-old Majid Khan, who was detained nearly two decades ago and later admitted to having been an Al-Qaeda affiliate, spent three years in the CIA’s secret overseas prisons, known as ‘black sites’. In 2006, the high value detainee was moved to Guantanamo Bay, the United States’ infamous detention center …
Read More »Julian Assange is a political prisoner worn down by a rigged judicial system that will never stop seeking to destroy him
At the High Court in London this week, the United States dealt yet another blow to Julian Assange, the journalist and founder of WikiLeaks who continues to languish in a maximum-security prison. I have covered Assange’s extradition hearings from the start and attended his High Court hearing this week remotely. …
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