V. Misuse of Detention

Jordan uses the Crime Prevention Law to place persons in administrative detention in a manner that violates the due process provisions of domestic law (see below), as well as the permissible application of administrative detention under international law.

One set of violations arises from the arbitrary application of the law to individuals or groups of persons who are in situations outside the scope of the Crime Prevention Law: Governors and their subordinates impose administrative detention against victims of crimes, such as women threatened with violence and victims of tribal threats of revenge, who should not be subject to detention in the first place. They abuse their authority against persons with whom they are in dispute or persons who appear to violate traditional social roles: women alone in public at night or in the company of men who are not their relatives; street vendors and beggars; and men suspected of drunkenness or with prior convictions.

Governors stand the principles of justice on their head when they punish victims of crimes with administrative detention, purportedly for their own protection, rather than prosecuting those who perpetrated acts or threats of violence against these victims.[14] The Crime Prevention Law provides no legal basis for this practice of “protective” custody, and governors unlawfully apply its provisions to this group of persons.

Women in “Protective” Custody

The Crime Prevention Law does not specifically authorize placing women in protective custody, but governors have nevertheless used it for decades to detain women.

Jordanian governors force women who are threatened with violence, including at the hands of family members, into protective custody to protect them from immediate harm, although governmental intervention detaining the threatened woman is not always immediate.[15] Women in protective custody find their right to liberty ended with the stroke of the governor’s pen. Many remain in prison for years—Human Rights Watch knows of cases where women remained confined in detention for more than 10 years. Yet protective custody has brought about no perceptible decrease in the incidence of so-called “honor” crimes, or threats thereof, in Jordan. In fact, this system allows family members who threaten women to continue to have decision-making power over the women’s lives.[16] Social and cultural norms regarding chastity, virginity, and “family honor,” and the stigma attached to unmarried women living alone, contribute to the incidence of administrative detention of women in Jordan.[17]

Jailing women threatened with violence is a failed and perverse attempt to combat one crime by perpetrating another. The government has unlawfully deprived hundreds of women of their liberty with impunity.[18] In January 2007 the UN special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment strongly criticized the government’s practice of holding women in protective custody, noting that, “depriving innocent women and girls of their liberty for as long as 14 years can only be qualified as inhuman treatment, and is highly discriminatory.”[19] In its review of Jordan’s combined third and fourth periodic reports, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women echoed the special rapporteur’s concerns, calling on the government to “replace the practice of protective custody with other measures that ensure the protection of women without jeopardizing their liberty, and to accordingly transfer all women currently held in protective custody to the Family Reconciliation Centre or other safe shelters.”[20]The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has also stated that “protection” cannot be used as an excuse to arbitrarily detain women, and has called for protective custody to be used only as a “last resort.”[21] Even as a last resort, custody as a measure of protection must remain voluntary and women must be allowed to leave at any time they wish. This is not the case in Jordan.

Few crimes pose as serious a challenge to the rule of law in Jordan as “honor” killings. These murders, generally perpetrated by family members against women and girls who have entered into a relationship with a man not condoned by the family, or are suspected of so doing,[22] account for the majority of female murders in the country.[23] In 2007 journalist Rana Husseini, who has been tracking cases for years, recorded 18 such cases,[24] and from the start of 2008 to April 6, 2009, she recorded at least another 24.[25]

Only governors have the authority to release a woman from detention and to determine whether she is still at risk of violence, denying her any degree of control over her freedom. Some women and girls have been killed after being returned to their families, which reinforces the inclination of authorities to detain them indefinitely.

The use of protective custody was routine until 2007. In that year, the government opened the Wifaq Center for women at risk of violence, hailing it as a shelter to protect women without compromising their freedom. According to the director of Juwaida women’s prison, 30 women were in protective custody in 2000, while “only” five were in custody in 2007.[26]This development is probably the result of increased awareness about the problems with protective custody at the Ministry of Interior, which undertook a general review of cases of women in “protective” custody that year following advocacy efforts by local nongovernmental organizations. With the help of a local NGO, several women held in protective custody were transferred to Wifaq. By 2008, the government had moved all women who had been in protective custody for years out of prison, but in that year, 2008, governors held a small number of newly-detained women in protective custody.[27] The inability of women themselves to obtain their release has not changed.

Even the transfers from Juwaida women’s prison to the Wifaq Center required the agreement of the family members who have threatened the women. The director of the Juwaida women’s prison told Human Rights Watch,

The governor starts with the family. Even when we transfer a case to [the NGO], the family needs to know. We find one person to notify. They know where she is and have information about her but the girls don’t know. If they did, they would prefer to stay in prison. The family must agree. These are our norms and customs. We are a tribal society.[28]

Cases of women in protective custody

The governor of Amman detained Rihab L., 24, after she remarried without her family’s permission. Her cousin killed the man she married when he discovered that the couple had eloped. At the time of Human Rights Watch's visit, she had been detained for two-and-a-half months and had not seen her infant son during that time. She told Human Rights Watch,

The governor of Amman asked me if there was any risk to my life. I said yes. He said, “OK, put her in Juwaida [women’s prison] under a monetary guarantee [kafala] of 30,000 dinars [about US$42,500].” I don’t have a lawyer. My family says they don’t have the money and that I did something really big. I spoke to my family last month and asked them when they’re going to release me. I want to see my son. I can live anywhere with my son. I’m not afraid of my family.[29]

The brothers of Miriam N., 23, a divorced woman with three children, evicted her from their home multiple times, although she had even loaned them money. Miriam stayed with her children in the Wifaq shelter, and later slept in a mosque, before renting a flat where she lived on her own after giving her divorced husband custody over the children. Five of her brothers came to her apartment with a gun, threatening her and telling her she needed to reconcile with her husband because it was shameful for her to live alone. The neighbors called the police and the district governor’s office. “The police didn’t speak to me at all,” she said.

They took me in their car with my head bent down. They said, “We’re afraid they’ll kill you.” They took me to the district governor’s office then the police station [nazhzhara] of Juwaida. I stayed one night there. The police woman was very aggressive with me. She made me undress. I thought I was leaving when they asked me to come into the office that morning. I went to the district administrator’s office and four officers used rude language with me. They said, “This girl doesn’t know how to do anything but complain. She’s not normal.” I told the district administrator that I have three children and this is my situation. I know that none of my brothers will post guarantees on my behalf. There’s no case against me. I should be able to be released on my own guarantee.[30]

If the motives of officials imposing protective custody is women’s protection from violence, the case of Amira Z., 37, shows the perversity of the approach even more graphically than Miriam N.’s. A mother of three, Amira Z. was administratively detained in Juwaida in October 2007. Police officers arrested her while she was out shopping, and Amira suspected this was because of a facial scar inflicted by her previous husband: Policemen “asked me why my face was cut up,” she told Human Rights Watch. She continued, “One of the officers slapped me three times on the eye and one of the officers slapped me again when I refused to tell him my current husband’s full name.” At the governorate, she called her husband and asked him to come pick her up. “My husband came and asked them why I was there and why they hit me. They asked him to leave the room and told me that I would be sent to Juwaida.”[31]

The governor of Zarqa administratively detained Azza S., 27, after she was held on suspicion of zina (adultery or fornication) when she was a minor, but was never charged. She told Human Rights Watch that she had been detained for a total of 11 years, the last four of which were classified as protective custody. She described the hopelessness she felt about her situation:

I beg the minister of interior, the minister of justice, the queen and the king to let me out of this place. I’ve lived here all of my life. Why are we treated this way? I’ve written so many letters to the Ministry of Interior. So I have a risk from my family? So what? What right do they have to keep people in prison until they die? I’m miserable here. What’s the solution? My three brothers [who threatened me] don’t even live in Jordan anymore. After the zina case, I wrote to the governor and he pardoned me. But he won’t release me even though I have a lawyer. After the zina case, my brother threatened me then I went to the governor’s office and he brought me back here. I made a mistake but I’ve already spent 11 years in prison for it. If the governor won’t release me, I may stay here forever.[32]

Juwaida’s longest-serving female administrative detainee, Aisha E., 48, was first detained in January 1987 on charges of conspiring to kill her husband. A native of Irbid, she was married at 14 and has six children. Her 20-year sentence was commuted to 10 years, but when it ended the local governor transferred her into administrative detention because he deemed her life at risk. She completed her criminal sentence in 1997 and has been administratively detained ever since. She told Human Rights Watch,

I went to the governor’s office after my sentence [ended] and the next day I was back here. The governor is a relative. He told me, “Yesterday I had lunch with your family. How can I let you go? They’re going to kill you.” He said, “Your family knows you’re innocent but the problem is that people talk.” Since 1987 until now, I’ve been outside for one day. I went into the car to the governor’s office and back. That’s it. I don’t know anything about the world.

Having spent much of her adult life in prison, Aisha E. thinks she is no longer able to survive outside of its walls. She told Human Rights Watch that she does not want to leave Juwaida because the prison staff treat her well.[33]

One reason detentions are prolonged is because governors change every few years and are unfamiliar with the cases, and they do not always follow up to determine whether family members continue to pose a threat to the woman’s life. Only under pressure from local rights groups did the Ministry of Interior undertake a general review of women in protective custody.[34]

Governors have also invoked the Crime Prevention Law to detain women who have simply run away from home or eloped. While neither of these acts is defined as a crime under the Jordanian Penal Code, authorities have used them as grounds to detain women administratively as a matter of custom. With respect to runaways, governors treat the person as a suspect rather than a victim who may have run away from an abusive home.

The governor of Karak administratively detained Nisrin S., 26, for over three years. She ran away from home after her uncle sexually assaulted her and then a stranger raped her in the abandoned building where she was hiding. Officers from the criminal investigation unit found her after her uncle reported her missing. She has sent at least 10 letters to the governor of Karak asking to be released. She received two responses asking her whom she would be able to leave with. She responded that she would like to be her own guarantor.[35]

In another case, the authorities misled Basma K., 21, into believing they would guide her to a shelter when police arrested her and brought her to the district administrator after she fled an abusive household. The administrator had detained her in Juwaida for one day at the time of Human Rights Watch’s visit. Basma said that her parents beat her regularly and “treated her like their maid.” She slept in an abandoned building until the landlord asked her to leave. She found a woman who was willing to let her spend the night in her home but the woman’s husband called the police, who sent her to the Marka district administrator, where she arrived with a black eye she said her abusive parents had inflicted upon her. She told Human Rights Watch,

I stayed there for one night. They wouldn’t let me leave. My parents never reported that I was gone so on what basis are they holding me? They said they would take me to Dar al-Wifaq [the government-run shelter] but they tricked me. They brought me here. I saw the sign outside the prison but they said they were just bringing me here for some paperwork. This was my first time in prison. I have no case or anything against me. On what basis are they keeping me here? I told them that my family was still posing a threat. I wouldn’t have said that if I knew I would be in jail. They kept telling me that they would take me to the shelter. Death is better than being in prison. Why didn’t my father come to release me? Maybe he left me here to discipline me.[36]

Other Victims of Violence

Human Rights Watch encountered numerous cases in which governors punished victims of threats of violence with administrative detention, masked as protective custody, while expending little effort to address the threats to their safety or providing protection without detention to those under threat.

Protection of victims threatened with violence would require addressing the source of the threat and shielding the victim. This would entail timely investigations and, if warranted, prosecutions of those who issue threats, whose identities are usually well-known, and physical protection of the victim, including, where necessary, by providing anonymity and the ability to live outside the reach of those who issue threats. Jordan has not put such mechanisms in place. Instead, it allows persons to issue threats, generally with impunity, and instead punishes the victim with jail.

Human Rights Watch met ‘Isam Bastum in Qafqafa prison, where he had been detained on orders of the governor of Irbid for six weeks at the time of our visit. On July 12, 2007, the Major Crimes Court in Amman had ruled that Bastum was not criminally responsible for the death by shooting of an intruder at his farm near Irbid in October 2006. Bastum told Human Rights Watch,

On the same day [of the verdict], I was taken from pretrial detention to Irbid Security Directorate, and from there to the governor on July 13. I signed three papers, one of them giving the governor the right to make a decision to do what he wants. I felt that I did not really have an option of not signing. The governor’s secretary, ‘Umar al-Shuraida, held the meeting, which lasted 15 minutes. He said he wanted to detain me “for your safety.” I went to Irbid prison, and spent 20 days in the detention center there.

Bastum’s attempts to gain his release continued. The governor’s subordinates dismissed the pleas of his brothers for Bastum’s release, saying only that “we fear for him.”

Before sending him to Qafqafa, ‘Umar al-Shuraida, the governor, summoned Bastum, who had threatened to send an official letter of protest against his detention, and made Bastum sign a paper stating the government bore no responsibility for his safety as a condition of release. Al-Shuraida also asked the family of the deceased man to sign a pledge not to take revenge. When they declined, the governor sent Bastum to Qafqafa prison.

The governor exerted no apparent effort to release Bastum at his own risk, to afford him protection while respecting his right to liberty, or to investigate the nature and source of threats that led the governor to “fear for him” in the first place. Bastum explained that the two families do not live close together, and that the dead intruder, who had dozens of previous convictions for theft, was hardly someone whom many would see as an innocent victim of a murderer. Following the governor’s failure to act, Bastum said that after one month in prison his family sent intermediaries to the intruder’s family to try to reach some kind of peaceful understanding. The family would only pledge not to harm him for one month.

Bastum, an engineer and businessman, did not know what more he could do. “I’m still in prison,” he said. “And apparently I, an innocent man, cannot get out unless the family of a thief pledges not to commit a crime and kill me.”[37]

In the south of Jordan, the governor of Ma’an detained members of the Ghanaimat family over a series of disputes with the Na’ana family, both from Petra. According to accounts the Ghanaimats gave Human Rights Watch in Aqaba prison, Na’anas shot at them in September 2006, injuring three family members. They said that prosecutors eventually ordered the shooters detained and started a criminal case against them. In early 2007, however, a brawl between the two families injured three Ghanaimats. The Na’anas, who suffered no harm, filed a complaint that led to the administrative detention of six Ghanaimat members on the orders of the governor. These six Ghanaimat family members said they had not been accused of a crime, but remained in custody months later.[38]

In an earlier case, the governor of Ma’an, in March 2004 administratively detained Najih Krishan al-Saghir, who that month had completed a jail term for the 1993 killing of a man from another tribe. The governor imposed on al-Saghir a 20,000 dinar monetary guarantee and the “completion of tribal reconciliation,” and forced him to remain in detention, now by executive order. On August 31, 2005, al-Saghir asked the governor to release him, but received no response. On November 20, 2005, he challenged his detention in court. Ten days later, the High Court of Justice found in his favor, citing that the Crime Prevention Law has no provisions for conditioning release on tribal conciliation.[39]

Foreigners

Juwaida prison director Muhammad al-Muhaimid told Human Rights Watch that no foreigners are held in Jordan’s prisons on immigration violations, but Human Rights Watch found several foreigners in prisons under administrative detention because they could not be deported. Some had been detained for more than two years. Al-Muhaimid admitted that “there are cases where foreigners who do not have a passport or nationality are detained, and most of them are married to Jordanians.”[40]

Lack of valid immigration documents alone is not sufficient ground to detain a person. The UN Human Rights Committee, which provides authoritative interpretation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), commenting on a case brought by a detainee against Australia in 1997, wrote, “Detention should not continue beyond the period for which the State can provide appropriate justification.” Illegal entry or the likelihood of the foreigner absconding or not cooperating with the authorities, the committee continued, may justify detention only “for a period. Without such factors detention may be considered arbitrary.”[41] Foreigners who live in Jordan, especially those whose marriage to a Jordanian would indicate little risk of flight, should not be detained pending resolution of their immigration status.

A Jamaican, apparently suffering from mental illness, had already spent two years in Aqaba prison and had been in solitary confinement for days when Human Rights Watch visited him there. Because Jamaica had no diplomatic representation in Jordan, he could not be deported, prison officials said.[42] Artin Gregor, a Lebanese in Juwaida prison, had been detained since 2005 because Lebanon did not recognize him as a Lebanese citizen and he had no identity documents. Prison director al-Muhaimid said he had sent another letter to the Lebanese embassy on Gregor’s behalf four days before our visit.[43]

Jordanian authorities had detained Ali Mahir, a 55-year-old Egyptian, for two months at the time of Human Rights Watch’s visit to Swaqa prison. He said that he had lost his passport in 2005 and could not provide identification when he came to a random checkpoint in June 2007. Before his arrest, he said, he “had been to the Egyptian consulate many times to try to get a new [passport], but they didn’t give me one.” According to Mahir, Salt governor Samih al-Majali ordered him detained administratively because he lacked identification papers.[44]

Yahya Bani Fadl, a Jordanian in his early twenties, came from the West Bank to Zarqa in Jordan, where his parents were living, early in 2006. Police released him and two other Jordanian youths 20 days after arresting him on December 20, 2006, for theft. On January 15, 2007, police rearrested Bani Fadl, and Zarqa Deputy Governor Abd al-Jalil al-Salamat put him under administrative detention pending deportation. “He wrote that I was to be deported after asking me if I could go to the West Bank,” he told Human Rights Watch. “I said ‘Yes,’ but then I asked him not to deport me. I have a Jordanian national number and all my family is here.” Bani Fadl, who had been detained for over six months at the time of our visit, continued,

Two months ago, I went on a hunger strike with 18 other administrative detainees. All others got out except for me, because I am [originally] Palestinian. I wrote my last petition for clemency three days ago, my ninth altogether. I have no way of knowing if these petitions ever get anywhere. There is no answer. My parents also try to get me out every day, but nothing happens.[45]

Najah Abu al-Hanna, 69, is another Egyptian detained in order to be deported. Abu al-Hanna is married to a Jordanian, with two teenage children, and has lived in Jordan for 33 years, herding cattle in Dhulail. In 2002, he said, police arrested him after he got into a fight with a Jordanian policeman, and charged him with assault. Although a court granted bail, he was unable to meet it, and because his residency permit expired in 2003, the governor detained him administratively. In 2006 Abu al-Hanna secured his release under an amnesty for administrative detainees, but authorities returned him to prison, again under administrative detention, days later. According to Abu al-Hanna, the court in June 2007 ordered his deportation, but he insisted on clearing his name in court, where the assault case was not progressing because the plaintiff failed to appear in court or produce witnesses. Because of his expired residency, he remained in administrative detention. His children left for Egypt in 2007, with their mother, to pursue their education. When Human Rights Watch met him, Abu al-Hanna was on his second day of a “dry” hunger strike to protest his detention, in a foul smelling solitary confinement cell. “I want to call the governor and ask for the reason for my detention,” he said. “My money and my passport are with the police.”[46]