MOSCOW, August 12 (RAPSI) - The Prosecutor General's Office registered a request filed by Svetlana Gannushkina, the head of the Grazhdanstvoye Sodeistviye (Civil Assistance) NGO, who asked to launch a probe into a camp set up by the Moscow authorities for foreigners awaiting deportation, RIA Novosti reported on Monday.

Earlier, police officials said that up to 586 people, mostly Vietnamese nationals, were living in tents set up about two weeks ago in eastern Moscow, following a series of police raids targeting illegal immigrants.

Human rights campaigners from the Grazhdanstvoye Sodeistviye NGO, who have repeatedly visited the camp, voiced concerns over conditions there and what it claimed were a series of violations of its inmates' rights.

"We've written two petitions, one of them to the Investigative Committee, in which we requested it to open a criminal case. And the second one to the prosecutors," Gannushkina said.

Gannushkina claimed there is no law allowing state officials to keep the detained migrants at the camp. "What has been done is a crime," she said.

Under Russian law, detained foreigners are supposed to be kept at special centers for non-citizens. But the Moscow authorities ran out of space for such detainees after police rounded up hundreds of people in a series of round-ups focusing on outdoor markets.

The Golyanovo camp inmates holds citizens of Azerbaijan, Egypt, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, Uzbekistan and Syria, the NGO said.