More: A French judge, Sophie Clement, has requested access to information from Guantanamo Bay justifying the detention and transfer of three French citizens to the gulag. The men were detained at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in 2001. The French citizens have made allegations of torture, and the Convention on Torture of which the US is a signatory permits universal jurisdiction to investigate torture claims of citizens by other countries. Nizar Sassi, Mourad Benchellali, and Khaled Ben Mustapha say they were subjected to sexual abuse, beatings and sleep deprivation. The men were returned to France in 2005 where they were sentenced to one year in prison on terrorism charges in 2011.
{17.01.12}Operating from a position of intimate familiarity with gulags, the Russian Foreign Ministry criticized the US human rights record in a report. The twenty pages addressing the US record said the continued existence of the Guantanamo detention center was the main human rights problem, but also mentioned "longstanding systematic problems" such as racial discrimination, corruption, and a "flawed electoral system". Russia has been criticized for similar human rights failures by international bodies such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
On a more cooperative note, the Russian tanker Renda began delivering fuel to Nome, Alaska after being escorted through the pack ice by an American breaker. Nome would have been without fuel until break up in April without the Renda coming to the city's aid. Normal fuel delivery was cancelled by rough weather in a particularly severe storm season.