February, 04 2011, 01:05pm EDT
Tunisia: Prison Visit Ends 20-Year Ban
Government Should Ease Overcrowding, Let Families Visit Death Row Inmates
WASHINGTON
Tunisia's interim government should ease overcrowding and reverse a
policy imposed more than 15 years ago to deny inmates facing the death
penalty any contact with their families, Human Rights Watch said today.
Human Rights Watch made the requests to the new justice minister, Lazhar
Karoui Chebbi, after visiting two Tunisian prisons. The visits ended a
20-year ban on access to Tunisian prisons by human rights organizations.
On February 2, 2011, the two-member Human Rights Watch delegation
visited Bourj er-Roumi, a large prison complex near the city of Bizerte
where there was an inmate mutiny as the previous government fell. The
delegation visited Mornaguia Prison, Tunisia's biggest facility, on
February 1. The researchers interviewed prisoners in private, including
two facing the death penalty who had been deprived of all contact with
their family, one for three years and the other for 10.
The events that occurred at Bourj er-Roumi will be the subject of a separate communique.
"By granting us access, Tunisia's transitional government has
taken a step toward transparency in its prison operations that we hope
will continue and extend to local organizations," said Eric Goldstein,
deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "The
transitional government also needs to break with the inhumane treatment
of prisoners practiced by the ousted government."
As an immediate step, Human Rights Watch said, the transitional
government should allow Tunisia's 140 death-row prisoners to receive
family visits like other prisoners. The transitional government should
also allow prisoners confined to severely overcrowded cells more time
outside them each day, Human Rights Watch said.
A Justice Ministry official told Human Rights Watch that prior to
President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali's ouster, Tunisia, a country of 10.5
million inhabitants, had 31,000 prisoners. It was the highest per capita
prison population of any country in the Middle East and North Africa
except Israel, according to the International Centre for Prison Studies.
One of the first promises made on behalf of the transitional
government by Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi was an imminent amnesty
for all political prisoners. However, a draft law approved by the
cabinet has yet to become law. In the meantime, the judiciary has
granted conditional release or pre-trial provisional release to about
half of Tunisia's more than 500 political prisoners.
Access to Tunisia's Prisons
The Tunisian Human Rights League was the last independent human
rights organization to visit a Tunisian prison, in 1991. But the
government ended the group's visits shortly after it began.
Ben Ali's government promised
on April 19, 2005, to give Human Rights Watch prompt access to prisons.
Five-and-a-half years later, negotiations on the terms of the visits had gone nowhere.
The government set what Human Rights Watch considered unreasonable
conditions for the visits and failed to respond to counter-proposals.
Tunisia has allowed regular visits since 2005 by the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), a humanitarian
organization that - in contrast to organizations like Human Rights Watch
- does not make its findings public but instead presents reports to the
ministries in charge. The ICRC visits Tunisia's prisons, which are
administered by the Justice Ministry, as well as the official
pre-arraignment detention centers (garde a vue) administered by the Interior Ministry.
Prison Visits for Death Row Inmates
A Justice Ministry official told Human Rights Watch that Tunisia has
about 140 prisoners facing the death penalty, half of them in Mornaguia
Prison, 14 kilometers west of Tunis. The previous government retained
the death penalty in law, but has practiced a de facto moratorium on
executions since 1994, meaning some inmates have been on death row for
more than 15 years.
The prison administration decided in the mid-1990s to deny death row
inmates any contact with family members. All other prisoners have been
allowed brief weekly visits from family members and may also correspond
with them. This policy also deprives death row prisoners of the
home-cooked meals and fruit that families are allowed to deliver to
other prisoners regularly. Prison staff privately expressed frustration
about this policy to Human Rights Watch, saying it complicates their job
of managing a uniquely challenging group of inmates.
This policy apparently has no basis in any publicly issued directive,
Human Rights Watch said. It violates Tunisia's Law 2001-52, of May 14,
2001, Governing Prisons, which gives all prisoners without distinction
the right to visits by their relatives "according to the laws in effect"
and to exchange correspondence with them "via the administration"
(article 18 (2) and (3)).
Tunisia's government should move to abolish the death penalty as a
punishment that is inherently cruel and inhuman. Such a measure, if
passed, should also immediately result in the commutation of the
sentences of those condemned to die.
"Tunisia should abolish the death penalty first and foremost, but in
any event, it should immediately give prisoners on death row the same
rights to family visits and correspondence as other prisoners" Goldstein
said.
Prison Conditions
The Human Rights Watch visits to Mornaguia and Bourj er-Roumi prisons
each lasted seven hours, enough time for only initial impressions, Human
Rights Watch said. To make a thorough evaluation and accurately
prioritize the needs and problems of the prison population would require
repeat visits to men's, women's, and juvenile detention centers by a
delegation with medical expertise, and further interviews with staff,
prisoners, their families, and former prisoners.
In Mornaguia, however, the delegation observed severe overcrowding in
the larger cells and inadequate opportunities for physical activity.
Most of the prisoners are held in poorly ventilated group cells of
about 50 square meters, each with about 40 prisoners. The high-ceilinged
rooms have rows of barely separated double-and triple-decker beds
against the side walls and a passageway less than two meters wide down
the middle, leading to toilets set apart from the main room by a wall
but no door. There is no room for tables or chairs.
Confined in rooms with far less than 1.5 square meters per person,
prisoners have no space for exercise. The majority neither work nor
receive vocational training and are only allowed to leave their cells
twice a day for periods of 45 to 60 minutes and for weekly showers and
weekly family visits. They eat in the cells, sitting on their beds and
storing food on the floor or on a ledge above the beds. The outdoor
courtyard Human Rights Watch visited where prisoners go when they are
allowed out of their cells was cramped, damp, draped with prisoner
laundry, and too small to permit exercise.
The cramped conditions appear to constitute inhumane and degrading treatment, Human Rights Watch said.
Interviews with former prisoners and some in these prisons who have
served time in other prisons in Tunisia confirm that these crowded
conditions in large group cells are the norm for most inmates in prisons
around the country. They also said that the crowding and overall
conditions were harsher in the 1990s than today.
International human rights instruments provide no single norm for the
amount of living space that prisoners should have. One standard,
recommended by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, is a
minimum space per prisoner of four square meters. In any event, for
prisoners confined to cramped quarters, having more time outside the
cell makes the crowding easier to endure.
Each inmate had his own bed in the rooms visited by Human Rights
Watch. However, inmates said that there have been periods when some
inmates lacked their own beds and slept on the floor.
The reduction of the prison population since Ben Ali's departure
should ease overcrowding. Other policy options that could also ease
overcrowding include implementation of the amnesty for political
prisoners, encouraging judges to hand out alternative sentences where
appropriate and to consider the capacity of the prison system to absorb
new prisoners when issuing sentences, paroling prisoners before the
completion of their term, and the construction of additional cells.
These options, however, require a public debate and in some cases
sizable budgetary allocations, Human Rights Watch said.
A comparatively easy and low-cost measure to alleviate overcrowding
in the short-term would be to allow prisoners additional daily time
outside their cells, Human Rights Watch said. The measure would require
additional staff time and the necessary logistical arrangements, but
would constitute a meaningful interim step until the government is able
to ensure that prisoners have adequate living space.
Political Prisoners
The Justice Ministry said that at the time the transitional government
took office, slightly more than 500 prisoners were being held for
politically motivated offenses. The number was close to the estimate
given by the International Association for Solidarity with Political
Prisoners, an independent Tunisian human rights organization.
About 150 remain incarcerated, 87 serving sentences under the
anti-terrorism law and another 56 awaiting trial, according to a Justice
Ministry official. A few additional prisoners are serving politically
motivated sentences not under the anti-terrorism law but under the
ordinary penal code or military law.
During the events surrounding the president's ouster, 11,029
prisoners escaped, of whom 2,425 had voluntarily surrendered as of
February 3, a Justice Ministry official said. Since then, the judiciary
has used its prerogative under the law to release conditionally 3,240
criminal prisoners, some of them first-time offenders who had served
half their sentences and others who are recidivists and who were
eligible for release after having served two-thirds of their sentences.
A Justice Ministry official said that 128 prisoners convicted under
Tunisia's 2003 anti-terrorism law were among those who escaped and that
they have been urged to return to custody. Another 177 serving sentences
under the anti-terrorism law were among those released conditionally
and another 100 facing trial under that law were freed provisionally.
The escapes and releases have cut Tunisia's prison population by more
than one-third in three weeks. This has reduced overcrowding, but less
than might be expected because the severe damage inflicted during the
recent events on some prisons, including Bourj er-Roumi, Monastir, and
Kasserine, has reduced the number of available beds and led to massive
transfers to other prisons.
The Anti-Terrorism Law
Nearly all of those still in detention for politically motivated
offenses were convicted under the anti-terrorism law. Among this
population, almost none were convicted in connection with specific
terrorist acts or possession of weapons or explosives. Instead, they
were charged with such offenses as "membership in a terrorist
organization," planning to join jihadists in Iraq or Somalia, recruiting
others for that purpose, or of having knowledge of crimes and failing
to notify the police.
Only two prisoners from the banned Islamist Nahdha party
remain in prison: Ali Farhat, 52, and Ali Abdallah Saleh Harrabi, 53,
both from the southern city of Douz. Like the majority of Nahdha members
imprisoned in the past, they were convicted of nonviolent offenses such
as membership in, or collecting funds for, an "unrecognized"
association, and attending "unauthorized" meetings. Human Rights Watch
met both men at Mornaguia, where they are serving sentences of about six
months.
Allegations of Torture, Unfair Trials
Those imprisoned under the anti-terrorism law, practically
without exception, gave more emphasis in their interviews this week to
the conditions they endured while in garde a vue detention at
the Ministry of Interior in Tunis than to their post-conviction
conditions in prison. They said that while they were held incommunicado
in the Interior Ministry, officers in street clothes beat or otherwise
tortured them into confessing and/or signing a statement that they were
prevented from reading.
At their trials they repudiated their statements, they said. Those
who said they had raised the allegations of torture got no response from
the court, which ended up convicting them. In most cases, these
detainees said that Judge Mehrez Hammami had presided over their trial.
Hammami, who gained a reputation for his record in convicting people
charged with politically motivated offenses, has reportedly been
transferred since Ben Ali's departure from the courtroom to a research
post in the Justice Ministry.
The allegations of torture and unfair trials raise questions about
the disposition of current prisoners who are not released under any
eventual amnesty law and who claim they were convicted on the basis of
confessions extracted through torture, or who otherwise claim to have
been the victims of patently unfair trials, Human Rights Watch said.
Given the routine practice of torture and of the multiple violations
of the rights of defendants to a fair trial under the prior government,
the transitional government should ensure there are effective appeal
mechanisms for prisoners who believe they were unfairly excluded from
the amnesty, Human Rights Watch said.
The Prison Visits
The Mornaguia administration imposed no obstacles to Human
Rights Watch interviews with three prisoners whose names it had
submitted in advance and four others it had selected on the spot. They
included four sentenced for politically motivated offenses and three for
ordinary criminal offenses. The prisoners chose the interview locations
and were told they could decline.
Bourj er-Roumi is one of several prisons where there was severe
violence in the days surrounding the ouster of Ben Ali, costing the
lives of 2 guards and 72 prisoners, including 48 in a fire in Monastir
Prison, according to the Ministry of Justice. At Bourj er-Roumi, on
January 14, prisoners broke down the doors of their cells and set fire
to them. The facility's administration says that guards shot dead ten
prisoners before order was restored three days later. Another died of a
heart attack and a twelfth died at the hands of other prisoners.
Human Rights Watch will publish a separate communique about the events at Bourj er-Roumi prison.
Given the recent violence, the atmosphere was far tenser at Bourj
er-Roumi. The Human Rights Watch visitors were accompanied to the
cellblocks by armed soldiers and large numbers of officials. The prison
was just beginning to repair the damage, so it was not possible to
assess normal conditions there, even preliminarily. Four prisoners at
Bourj er-Roumi agreed to speak individually to Human Rights Watch in a
private office and appeared to speak candidly. Three others declined to
be interviewed.
Imed Dridi, Mornaguia's director, said the prison was built in 2006
to accommodate 4,600 prisoners. It held 5,200 prisoners at the end of
2010 and now holds about 4,900, all adult men. The population includes
both pre-trial and convicted prisoners.
Hilmi ech-Cherif, Bourj er-Roumi director, said the prison, built
during the French colonial era, now has 1,429 prisoners, about half the
population it had before the mutiny. The other prisoners were either
released or transferred to other prisons; 12 died in the mutiny, as
noted above.
Human Rights Watch thanked the prisoners and administration of
Mornaguia and Bourj er-Roumi prisons for their willingness to receive
and speak to the delegation.
"Tunisia's transitional government has taken a critical step toward
transparency in opening prisons to outside observers who can share their
findings publicly," Goldstein said. "It should now resolve to improve
the treatment of prisoners, which was one of the darkest aspects of the
human rights picture under President Ben Ali."
Human Rights Watch is one of the world's leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. By focusing international attention where human rights are violated, we give voice to the oppressed and hold oppressors accountable for their crimes. Our rigorous, objective investigations and strategic, targeted advocacy build intense pressure for action and raise the cost of human rights abuse. For 30 years, Human Rights Watch has worked tenaciously to lay the legal and moral groundwork for deep-rooted change and has fought to bring greater justice and security to people around the world.
LATEST NEWS
Amid Spying Fight, House Passes Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act
"As FANFSA and the 702 reauthorization move to the Senate, lawmakers in that chamber need to take a stand for the rights of people in the United States," said one advocate.
Apr 17, 2024
While applauding the U.S. House of Representatives' bipartisan passage of a bill to ensure that "law enforcement and intelligence agencies can't do an end-run around the Constitution by buying information from data brokers" on Wednesday, privacy advocates highlighted that Congress is trying to extend and expand a long-abused government spying program.
The House voted 219-199 for Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act (FANFSA), which won support from 96 Democrats and 123 Republicans, including the lead sponsor, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio). Named for the constitutional amendment that protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, H.R. 4639 would close what campaigners call the data broker loophole.
"The privacy violations that flow from law enforcement entities circumventing the Fourth Amendment undermine civil liberties, free expression, and our ability to control what happens to our data," said Free Press Action policy counsel Jenna Ruddock. "These impacts affect everyone who uses digital platforms that extract our personal information any time we open a browser or visit social media and other websites—even when we go to events like demonstrations and other places with our phones revealing our locations."
"We're grateful that the House passed these vital and popular protections," she added. "The bill would prevent flagrant abuses of our privacy by government authorities in league with unscrupulous third-party data brokers. Making this legislation into law with Senate passage too would be a decisive and long-overdue action against government misuse of this clandestine business sector that traffics in our personal data for profit."
Wednesday's vote followed the House sending the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act to the Senate. H.R. 7888 would reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows for warrantless spying on noncitizens abroad but also sweeps up Americans' data.
The House notably included an amendment forcing a wide range of individuals and businesses to cooperate with government spying operations but rejected an amendment that would have added a warrant requirement to the bill, which the Senate could vote on as soon as Thursday.
Noting those decisions on the FISA reauthorization legislation, Ruddock stressed that "today's vote is a victory but follows a recent loss and ongoing threat as that Section 702 bill moves to the Senate this week too."
"As FANFSA and the 702 reauthorization move to the Senate, lawmakers in that chamber need to take a stand for the rights of people in the United States," she argued. "That means passing FANFSA and reforming Section 702 authority—and prioritizing everyone's First and Fourth Amendment rights."
Jeramie Scott, senior counsel and director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center's Project on Surveillance Oversight, also praised the House's FANFSA passage on Wednesday.
"The passage of the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale underscores the extent to which reining in abusive warrantless surveillance is a bipartisan issue," Scott said. "We urge the Senate to take up this measure and close the data broker loophole."
Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at ACLU, similarly said Wednesday that "the bipartisan passage of this bill is a flashing warning sign to the government that if it wants our data, it must get a warrant."
Hamadanchy added that "we hope this vote puts a fire under the Senate to protect their constituents and rein in the government's warrantless surveillance of Americans, once and for all."
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a critic of the pending 702 bill and FANFSA's lead sponsor in the upper chamber, called the the House's Wednesday vote "a huge win for privacy" and said that "now it's time for the Senate to follow suit."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Leaked Cables Show Biden Pressuring Nations to Oppose Palestine's UN Membership
"This is the evidence that President Biden's talk about a two-state solution is nothing but idle talk," said one former Lebanese diplomat.
Apr 17, 2024
As the United Nations Security Council prepares to vote Thursday on Palestine's bid to become a full U.N. member, the Biden administration—which claims to support Palestinian statehood—is lobbying UNSC nations in an effort to wrangle enough "no" votes so that the United States can avoid resorting to a veto.
Leaked cables obtained by The Intercept show U.S. pressure on Security Council members including Malta—which currently presides over the body—and Ecuador.
While claiming that President Joe Biden backs "Palestinian aspirations for statehood," one of the cables asserts that "it remains the U.S. view that the most expeditious path toward a political horizon for the Palestinian people is in the context of a normalization agreement between Israel and its neighbors."
"We therefore urge you not to support any potential Security Council resolution recommending the admission of 'Palestine' as a U.N. member state, should such a resolution be presented to the Security Council for a decision in the coming days and weeks," the document advises.
The U.S. argument essentially is that the U.N. should not create an independent Palestinian state by fiat—even though that's precisely how the world body voted in 1947 to establish the modern state of Israel.
The renewed push for Palestine's U.N. membership comes as Israel wages a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority, which hasn't controlled Gaza for nearly two decades, rejected the Biden administration's requests to hold off on seeking full membership.
"We wanted the U.S. to provide a substantive alternative to U.N. recognition. They didn't," one unnamed Palestinian official toldAxios on Wednesday. "We believe full membership in the U.N. for Palestine is way overdue. We have waited more than 12 years since our initial request."
As The Intercept's Ken Klippenstein and Daniel Boguslaw noted:
Since 2011, the U.N. Security Council has rejected the Palestinian Authority's request for full member status. On April 2, the Palestinian Observer Mission to the U.N. requested that the council once again take up consideration of its membership application. According to the first State Department cable, U.N. meetings since the beginning of April suggest that Algeria, China, Guyana, Mozambique, Russia, Slovenia, Sierra Leone, and Malta support granting Palestine full membership to the U.N. It also says that France, Japan, and Korea are undecided, while the United Kingdom will likely abstain from a vote.
Along with the United States, China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom are permanent members of the UNSC, so they also have veto power.
Ahead of Thursday's planned vote, Spain has been doing its own lobbying in Europe to build greater support for Palestinian statehood. At a joint Tuesday press conference with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob said the question is "when, not if, but when is the best moment to recognize Palestine."
Belgium—which is seeking economic sanctions against Israel in response to its genocidal war on Gaza—is expected to join Spain's push for Palestinian statehood after the country's European Union presidency expires in June.
Currently, 139 of the U.N.'s 193 member states recognize Palestine as an independent state.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who has also claimed to support a so-called "two-state solution"—has alternately boasted about thwarting Palestinian statehood.
Critics pointed to the leaked cables as more proof of U.S. duplicity and double standards on the Israel-Palestine issue.
"This is the evidence that President Biden's talk about a two-state solution is nothing but idle talk," Massoud Maalouf, a former Lebanese ambassador to Canada, Chile, and Poland, said on social media.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Database Exposes 'Illicit Network Undermining Democracy Around the World'
Yanis Varoufakis hailed the effort as "a treasure chest of well-researched reports on how the reactionaries of the world unite."
Apr 17, 2024
"Coups. Assassinations. Riots. Detentions. Disinformation. We know the tactics that have been deployed to undermine our democracies. But who is behind them?"
Progressive International (PI) asks and answers this and other questions with an extensive new database published Wednesday that connects the dots in what the leftist group calls the "Reactionary International"—a loose global network of right-wing leaders and organizations working to subvert democratic institutions.
PI calls it an "illicit network undermining democracy around the world."
"Today is a mask-off moment for the Reactionary International and the parties, politicians, judges, journalists, foundations, think tanks, tech platforms, NGOs, activists, financiers, and entrepreneurs that comprise it," PI said.
"After a year of preparation, we finally open the doors to our new research consortium, exposing the global network of reactionary forces that corrode our democracies, destroy our planet, and drive us closer to world war," the group added.
"The twin insurrections at the U.S. Capitol in 2021 and BrasÃlia's Three Powers Plaza in 2023 left no doubt about the international coordination of reactionary forces," PI argued. "Yet far too little is known about the entities of this network, their sources of financing, and their institutional allies operating inside our political systems."
Ultimately, PI aims to "support democratic systems to become more resilient to their insidious tactics."
From leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and former U.S. President Donald Trump—the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee—to evangelical Christian groups influencing laws in African countries criminalizing LGBTQ+ people and tech companies empowering ubiquitous state surveillance, Reactionary International is a who's-who of the world's right-wing forces.
A cursory search of the database's contents shows users can:
- Learn about Israel's NSO, Rayzone, and Team Jorge, and how a team of Tel Aviv tech entrepreneurs fuel unrest in Latin America;
- Meet the Grey Wolves, Turkey's roving death squad with links to President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan and the ethno-nationalists in his governing coalition; and
- Explore the global network of the Falun Gong, its Trump-connected media outlet The Epoch Times, and its traveling dance troupe known as Shen Yun.
Yanis Varoufakis, a PI member and secretary-general of the left-wing Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, called the database "a treasure chest of well-researched reports on how the reactionaries of the world unite."
PI invites the public to contribute to the database.
"Together, we will not only name, shame, and expose the forces of the far right—but also dismantle their network of complicity," the group said.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular