VIII. Treatment in Civilian Prisons

Detainees at Yabi prison told Human Rights Watch that detention conditions at the newly built prison facility, where all were eventually brought, were generally good. That was less true for the former VOA journalist Fernando Lelo, who told Human Rights Watch that he was only allowed to leave his cell for the prison yard after several months. “My detention conditions are not determined by the prison director, but by orders from his superiors,” he said. “It’s as if I was in a private prison here.”[42]

However, several detainees at Yabi prison told Human Rights Watch that after finally being presented to the public prosecutor and criminal investigation police, they were first shuttled back and forth to different cells of the “Cadeia Civil,” a transit detention center for military and civilian detainees, including illegal migrants.[43] Some detainees told Human Rights Watch they were “forced under the seats” of the cars by officials shuttling them to and from the Cadeia Civil.[44]

Others described to Human Rights Watch the inhumane conditions at that jail:

We stayed 17 days in the ‘dark cell’ of the Cadeia Civil. We had to do everything there—urinate, defecate, eat—but they didn’t beat us. After being presented to the public prosecutor, we were taken back to the military headquarters, where we stayed for seven days. Then they took us back to the Cadeia Civil, to the civilian part, for another four days.[45]

One detainee described his stay in the Cadeia Civil as “cramped into a cell of four square meters maximum together with 17 other people.”[46]