January 2023
USA: The Holmesburg prison experiments
Interview
Minors
Middle East
Turkey
According to main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) lawmaker Sezgin Tanrıkulu, thousands of women were unlawfully jailed in the aftermath of a coup attempt on July 15, 2016 due to their alleged links to the Gülen movement.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers…
Source — Stockholm Center for Freedom
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Europe
Justice
Facilities
Netherlands
Judges there will be able to handle the sessions of criminal cases, reducing the need to transfer detainees to courthouses elsewhere in the Netherlands. The small courtroom within the walls of the penitentiary will cost 15 million euros and is already under construction, wrote Legal Protection Mini…
Source — NL Times
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Minors
Middle East
Justice
Egypt
An Egyptian court on Sunday sentenced 22 children to lengthy prison sentences ranging between five and 15 years over rare anti-government protests that took place across the country four years ago.
The charges brought against the defendants included posting videos on YouTube calling for the protest…
Source — Middle East Eye
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Middle East
Material conditions
Bahrain
The 162 detainees, who are being held in Building No. 10 of the detention center, located south of the capital Manama, demanded that all prisoners should be treated humanely, and that sustainable guarantees to the full resolution of their problems should be provided, the independent online newspape…
Source — Press TV
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Africa
Material conditions
Violence
Chad
After being rounded up by police over mass protests against Chad’s military junta in October last year, hundreds of mostly young men faced this nightmarish two-day journey to the high-security Koro Toro prison, deep in the hostile Djurab desert. After they arrived at the remote jail, many were sent…
Source — RFI
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Africa
Protest
Ethiopia
Both the government official and residents recounted that the rebel forces broke into a zonal facility which is found in Goro Gudina village, and carried out offensives against the security guards of the center on Saturday night at around midnight.
Deputy mayor of Bule Hora town Girja Urago told Ad…
Source — Addis Standard
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Asia
Torture
China
Chinese human rights activist Lin Mingjie, who is serving a five-year jail term reportedly on fabricated charges, has been subjected to brutal torture in prison, his family members alleged. Lin Mingjie is jailed in Shenyang, the capital city of northeastern Liaoning province. He was subjected to to…
Source — Ucanews
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France: “Non-places"
Insights
Focus
Middle East
Health
Turkey
According to the İHD report, 39 of 76 inmates who died in prison in 2022 were critically ill.
Speaking to DW, İHD Chairman Öztürk Türkdoğan said the number of ailing prisoners and the death toll could be much higher than the report indicated. Türkdoğan described the situation as a “structural probl…
Source — Stockholm Center for Freedom
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Asia
Health
Bangladesh
Since the beginning of 2022, the ICRC’s Health Care in Detention team in Bangladesh has been training health staff, prison guards and detainees to raise awareness about scabies at the central prisons in Keraniganj, Chattogram, Cox’s Bazar, Bandarban and Jessore districts. Posters explaining symptom…
Source — ICRC
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South America
Chile
“There is a group of parliamentarians from both the opposition and the ruling party who have already formally proposed to us the possibility of creating a prison for people serving a sentence who are Mapuche people. We’re looking into that,” Chile’s Undersecretary of State for Justice, Jaime Gajard…
Source — The Rio Times
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Asia
Facilities
North Korea
North Korea has recently been working to reorganize the Yodok concentration camp for political prisoners (also known as Camp 15) and rebuild and repair its facilities with the goal of housing more inmates there, Daily NK has learned.
“North Korea recently eliminated a zone at Camp 15 and repaired a…
Source — Daily NK
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India: Delhi HC says undertrial prisoners can’t be detained in custody for an indefinite period
News
Asia
Justice
India
While hearing a bail plea of a man incarcerated for two years in a cheating case, the Delhi High Court recently held that in cases where speedy trial does not seem like a possibility, “undertrial prisoners cannot be detained in custody for an indefinite period”.
A single-judge bench of Justice Amit…
Source — The Indian Express
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Europe
Violence
Belarus
Unbearable conditions are created for dissidents in the Minsk temporary detention center (TDC), where they can be kept for months without hygiene items or a change of clothes. A Minsk resident told Viasna about the two-hour torture and beatings by the officers of the Main Directorate for Combating…
Source — Viasna
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