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Reuters Alertnet:

A third of all prisoners in Jordan have been jailed without formal charges or facing a trial, a prominent Jordanian human rights body said on Thursday.

The report, drawn up by the state-financed National Centre for Human Rights (NCHR) said some of the 2,884 inmates mentioned in the report have been in prison without charges for months and called for the closure of the kingdom’s notorious Jafr prison.

“The judicial detainees are imprisoned in many cases beyond a three month period without being handed a charge sheet or taken to a court to look into their cases,” the report said.

Police cannot detain someone without charge for more than 24 hours under Jordanian law, and in the case of security-related detainees that period extends to seven days, prominent lawyer Samih Khrais told Reuters.

Jordan denies there are systematic violations of prisoners’ rights in its jails.

The NCHR findings echoed reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) who say that imprisoning people for long periods of time without outside contact, trials or charges makes it easier to commit rights abuses.

Some activists have said prisoners in Jordan can spend several years in jail before being formally charged or sent to court.

In two cases, the families of Ibrahim Rahim Sulaian and Jibril Hassan Abu Taha say the men have been detained in Qafqfa prison for the last six months without being formally charged.

Such an outspoken report from an official group is rare in Jordan, where criticism of prisoner abuse ordinarily come from groups not sanctioned by the government.

HRW said it is concerned about the excessive use of a 1953 crime prevention law which the rights group says allows security forces to make arbitrary arrests without judicial process.

“It’s been a significant concern for some time especially with the intelligence services…that they detain people for longer than is allowed by law,” said Christophe Wilcke, an HRW Middle East researcher.

Wilcke said some prisoners have been held even after the end of their prison terms.

The NCHR caused an outcry with its first report on the state of Jordanian prisons in Sept. 2004 when it reported widespread prisoner abuse and accusations that prison wardens had beaten an Islamist inmate to death.

In the latest report, the NCHR said there was a drop in prisoner accusations of “inhumane behaviour and torture.”

The report also deplored the poor medical facilities and the spread of contagious diseases due to overcrowding.

Last year there were several strikes by political detainees protesting poor prison conditions and ill treatment.

Many political detainees put on trial say their confessions are extracted under duress.

This is scary and worrying… No further comments for now.

Here is a link to NCHR Jordan.

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