Inside Baghdad's Rusafa prison
source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7748623.stm
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- goingforawalk
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150 prisoners in a room the size of a small classroom. A look inside a system where prisoners can wait months to be charged. 1 shower, 3 toilets. They sleep in shifts due to the small number of beds.
Video can be seen at the link.
An Excerpt:
The situation here is not unique. Mobile phone footage filmed by Iraqi MPs who have visited other jails, seen by the BBC, shows similar conditions.
Rusafa prison
Prisoners can wait months in legal limbo due to a creaking judicial system
"We do have a problem with overcrowding," admits General Abdul Kareem al-Khalaf, the operations commander for the Interior Ministry. "And the increasing number of prisoners is putting a lot of pressure on the system."
He says there are still "some isolated cases" of violations such as torture or beatings in prisons, but insists the culture is changing.
It's the "exceptional situation" in the country that is to blame for the way the inmates are forced to live in the prison, said Rusafa's deputy governor, who didn't want to be named when we interviewed him. But he said the conditions were not "inhumane".
If you had seen the jails in Saddam Hussein's time, "then you would have seen really inhumane conditions".
There is less torture and other abuse now, from reports we have gathered. But Iraqis we have spoken to who have been imprisoned in Saddam's time and since say conditions haven't changed much.
And they could get even worse. As the United States and Britain gradually make their exit from Iraq, they are due to transfer thousands of prisoners into the custody of the Iraqi prison system.
Video can be seen at the link.
An Excerpt:
The situation here is not unique. Mobile phone footage filmed by Iraqi MPs who have visited other jails, seen by the BBC, shows similar conditions.
Rusafa prison
Prisoners can wait months in legal limbo due to a creaking judicial system
"We do have a problem with overcrowding," admits General Abdul Kareem al-Khalaf, the operations commander for the Interior Ministry. "And the increasing number of prisoners is putting a lot of pressure on the system."
He says there are still "some isolated cases" of violations such as torture or beatings in prisons, but insists the culture is changing.
It's the "exceptional situation" in the country that is to blame for the way the inmates are forced to live in the prison, said Rusafa's deputy governor, who didn't want to be named when we interviewed him. But he said the conditions were not "inhumane".
If you had seen the jails in Saddam Hussein's time, "then you would have seen really inhumane conditions".
There is less torture and other abuse now, from reports we have gathered. But Iraqis we have spoken to who have been imprisoned in Saddam's time and since say conditions haven't changed much.
And they could get even worse. As the United States and Britain gradually make their exit from Iraq, they are due to transfer thousands of prisoners into the custody of the Iraqi prison system.
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cabinettags
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Prison inmates are human, and deserve to be treated as such.
Having said that, I'll also say that it's high time we stopped trying to tell those folks how to do things. It's their country, let them make their own rules.
- 3 years ago
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cabinettags
