MOSCOW, February 28 (RAPSI) – Over the year, the number of complaints concerning respect of human rights during convoying of defendants from pretrial detention facilities to courts and to correctional facilities has risen fourfold as compared with figures registered in 2018, according to Russia’s Rights Commissioner Tatiana Moskalkova.

Her office, the ombudsman said addressing a meeting held to discuss the problems related to transportation of defendants and convicts, received four times more respective complaints in 2019 than in 2018; in about 18,000 complaints submitted to the European Court of Human Rights from Russia this problem was cited almost just as frequently as that of detention conditions.

Moskalkova noted that it was necessary to develop proper system of confinement conditions in courts and in railroad vehicles transporting convicts to correctional facilities; the respective proposals aimed to improve the current situation should be submitted to the Interior Ministry, Federal Penal Service and Justice Ministry.

Certain improvements were to be made with respect to transportation of convicts in prison vans, as those lacked utilities necessary for long time runs.