MAPUTO: Amnesty International claimed Thursday that thousands of prisoners were languishing in Mozambique's prisons without charge or access to proper legal representation.
In a report, the rights group catalogued a slew of alleged abuses, from detention of minors and prison overcrowding to arbitrary arrests and police torture.
The findings, reached in conjunction with Mozambique's Human Rights League, came from inspections of three prisons in the capital, Maputo, and two in the northern province of Nampula in February this year.
Amnesty claims to have found hundreds of cases of prolonged detention ranging from 12 months to 12 years.
According to Mozambican law people cannot be held on remand for longer than 11 months.
"This is a drop in the ocean and we went to only two cities," Amnesty International's Mozambique Researcher, Maluka-Anne Miti told AFP.
Amnesty said one Mozambican man spent 12 years inside a maximum security prison in the Mozambican capital without ever being told why he had been arrested, or receiving a court hearing.
Police arrested Jose Capitine Cossa while selling crafts by the side of the road in 2001.
Authorities released him earlier this year after the Attorney General determined his detention had been "irregular".
"He could not remember where he was from or his address," said Miti.
People arrested in Mozambique do not automatically get the right to a phone call.
"If you don't have a lawyer and if your family does not know where you are you have no way of getting out," she said.
Thirty-three percent of the over 16,000 prisoners in Mozambique's overcrowded jails are awaiting trial, the country's Attorney General, Augusto Paulino told parliament in May.
Amnesty also uncovered instances of arbitrary arrests and cases of police torture in order to extract confessions.
In one case, says the report, police asked the father of a 15-year-old girl if they could beat her to force her to confess to her mother's murder.
Her father refused but she went to prison anyway.
Having already served close to two years in pre-trial detention, she was released, aged 17.
"Sixteen is the age of responsibility here but we saw people who looked younger and said they were younger than that," says Miti explaining that authorities put the onus on detainees to prove their age.
"In Mozambique, people do not have IDs, especially not at that age," she added.
Overcrowding is also said to be a serious problem.
At one prison in the northern Nampula province, inmates were crammed into cells so tightly that they could not lie down and had to sleep in shifts.
"In one cell we saw 192 people with only one toilet," says Miti.
The report comes in the wake of a mass prison break in the north-western province of Tete.
Around 46 prisoners broke out of jail on Sunday local media reported. The prison, built to house 80, was housing 500, authorities said.
Prison riots are also common.
In September this year prisoners in the city of Beira rioted over poor food and sanitary conditions.
FROM: AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
Amnesty warns of Mozambican jail crisis
Amnesty warns of Mozambican jail crisis
Russia says two crew members from US-seized tanker released
- “Two Russian sailors have been released and are on their way home to Russia,” Zakharova said
- Russia announced earlier this month that the US had decided to release the Russian duo
MOSCOW: Moscow said Wednesday two Russian crew members of a tanker seized this month by the United States in the Atlantic had been released and were on their way home.
US authorities took over the Russian-flagged vessel earlier this month, alleging it was part of a shadow fleet carrying oil from countries such as Venezuela, Russia and Iran in violation of US sanctions.
The United States said publicly that the Marinera’s crew could be prosecuted. Russia said that would be “categorically unacceptable” and accused Washington of stoking tensions and threatening international shipping.
“Two Russian sailors have been released and are on their way home to Russia,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency on Wednesday.
Russia announced earlier this month that the United States had decided to release the two Russian crew members, but last week its Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the decision had not yet been implemented.
The captain and the first officer of the tanker have left UK waters, Solicitor General for Scotland, Ruth Charteris told a court hearing Tuesday, Press Association news agency reported.
“The captain and the first officer are now aboard the US Coast Guard vessel Munro and have departed the United Kingdom’s territorial sea,” Charteris said.
Twenty-six of the 28 crew have left the ship, officials told AFP. They were processed at a military site in Inverness, Scotland, the court was told, according to Press Association.
Five wanted to travel to the United States and 21 elsewhere. None have claimed asylum, the court heard.
“At the request of the US authorities, crew members have been allowed to disembark for onwards travel,” a UK government spokesperson told AFP Wednesday.
“They will be processed in line with all appropriate immigration and legal requirements.”
Britain was not involved in the movement of the other two crew members, the government said.
The United States seized the tanker, previously known as Bella 1, which was being escorted by the Russian navy, after chasing it from near the Venezuelan coast.
It was re-flagged and re-named to bring it under Russian jurisdiction in a bid to discourage the United States from trying to take it as part of its campaign against Venezuela.
