SummaryTorture remained widespread and routine in Jordan’s prisons at the time of Human Rights Watch’s research in 2007. Updates to our investigation in 2008 reveal that problems of torture and accountability persist. We received allegations of ill-treatment, often amounting to torture, from 66 out of 110 prisoners interviewed. Prison guards torture inmates with near impunity because police prosecutors and police judges at the Police Court do too little to pursue cases against their fellow officers. Prison conditions remain poor, especially health, food, and visitation provisions, despite an ambitious but ill-considered reform program excessively focused on building new prisons. This report is based on Human Rights Watch’s visits to seven out of ten of Jordan’s prisons in August and October 2007, and in April 2008. We interviewed 110 prisoners at random, except for specifically identified administrative detainees and Islamist prisoners to whom we asked to speak. We interviewed prison directors and medical staff, and held talks with high-ranking officials in the Ministry of Interior, the Public Security Directorate, and the prison service. Jordan’s Ministry of Interior, Public Security Directorate, prison service, prison reform program, human rights office and Police Court almost always facilitated our requests and were always open to discussions. The willingness of these representatives of the Jordanian government to grant us access to their prison facilities and to meet with us repeatedly to discuss our concerns as well as particular cases is commendable and reflects a positive commitment to transparency and reform. Despite the PSD’s openness to human rights organizations, high-ranking officials regularly dismiss independent human rights reporting as unreliable or politically motivated. King Abdullah has called on the government to present a prison reform plan “according to the latest specifications consistent with international standards. Public Security Directorate (PSD) chief Maj.Gen. Muhammad ‘Aitan in November 2007 sent out directives to PSD officials stating that torture was unacceptable. In April 2008, the Public Security Directorate’s new director, Maj.Gen. Mazin al-Qadi, informed us at length about ongoing improvements to the prison system, including more judicial oversight over prisons to investigate allegations of abuse. The public concern of Jordan’s highest leadership about torture has not showed lasting effects on the ground. Prison guards under the jurisdiction of the Public Security Directorate routinely torture or ill-treat inmates for perceived infractions of prison rules or for requests, such as access to doctors, the telephone, or visitation, but also in retaliation for filing complaints. In five prisons, detainees told us that prison directors participated in torture. We found torture in each of the seven prisons we visited between August 2007 and April 2008, speaking unsupervised to 110 prisoners. We found several instances of recent torture only days before our visit in four prisons. Most common forms of torture include beatings with cables and sticks and the suspension by the wrists of inmates from metal grates for hours at a time. Guards flog the defenseless prisoner with knotted electrical cables, beat him with hoses and truncheons, or kick him with fists and boots. Islamists accused or convicted of crimes against national security (Tanzimat) face greater abuse than ordinary prisoners. Prison authorities currently house Tanzimat prisoners in separate facilities in small-group isolation within two prisons, Juwaida and Swaqa; since July 2007, the government has only rarely allowed them to mix with fellow prisoners. Because they often act as a group pressing demands in prison, guards occasionally punish them collectively. Such punishment happened to the Tanzimat inmates in Swaqa prison in July 2007 and August 2007, and to the Tanzimat inmates in Juwaida prison in June 2007. (This report does not cover earlier such incidents that took place in 2006.) Complaints of incidents of torture have decreased recently, the National Center for Human Rights reported, but remain a common occurrence, as Human Rights Watch’s research shows. Torture and ill-treatment in prisons do not reflect a general policy, although individual prison directors, high-ranking guards, and special forces dealing with prison riots, have ordered and participated in large-scale beatings. Torture remains a tolerated practice in Jordan’s prisons because mechanisms for individual accountability are lacking. The deterrent effect of a royal proclamation against torture is less than that of effectively prosecuting an individual guard. Yet, the esprit de corps of the PSD, its reluctance to prosecute, name, and shame torturers within its ranks decidedly militates in favor of settling incidents of torture quietly and internally, if at all, with only a few egregious cases making it to the courts. In Jordan, PSD prosecutors and PSD judges investigate, prosecute and try their fellow officers for neglect of duties, abuse of power, insults to prisoners, and torture. Deficient investigations, lackluster prosecutions, and lenient sentences combine to preserve an uncomfortably wide margin in which prison guards torture with impunity. Jordan‘s mechanisms to remedy torture and hold perpetrators accountable are not effective. Prisoners can complain to prison officials, a police prosecutor at the prison, officials from the PSD Grievances and Human Rights Office, or outside visitors, such as human rights groups, lawyers or their family members. Prison directors inspect wards housing 20 to 60 inmates in large rooms with bunk beds and personally receive complaints, but many inmates remain fearful of repercussions of complaints made to prison personnel. The police prosecutors began to work at seven prisons in 2008, but had investigated only one case of abuse by April 2008. That number rose to 24 cases by August 2008, however. Grievances and Human Rights officials have the longest experience in investigating prison abuses, but they do not protect complainants and witnesses or remove guards accused of wrongdoing from contact with them. These officials wear the same uniform as prison guards, and inmates remained fearful of submitting complaints of torture. We found that Grievances officials, who have full powers of police prosecutors, referred cases for prosecutions only where incontrovertible forensic reports attested to torture. Of 19 cases of alleged torture Grievances officials investigated in 2007, they referred six to court for prosecution. However, the directors of three prisons, Muwaqqar, Qafqafa, and Swaqa, told Human Rights Watch that from January to August 2007, they had investigated 20 instances of abuse altogether, and internally disciplined six guards for assaulting or abusing inmates and using excessive force. Even where the government has prosecuted some egregious cases of torture, the Police Court’s verdicts have been flawed. Police prosecutors, not their civilian counterparts, prosecute all crimes and violations of the law involving PSD officials. The PSD’s director appoints qualified police officers as Police Court judges to try their fellow officers.. Two incidents of torture that Human Rights Watch documented remained entirely without consequence: Juwaida and Swaqa prison guards tortured several Islamist prisoners following a successful escape by two prisoners from Juwaida in June 2007. The PSD also did not prosecute a guard who had tortured prisoners at Muwaqqar prison in early April 2008, despite an extensive investigation into the deaths of three prisoners in a fire at that prison on April 14, 2008. The PSD did not inform the public or the families and victims about the investigation’s process and outcome, which concluded that no official had done anything wrong. The government has quietly taken some initial steps to provide greater opportunities for redress, but has not vigorously pursued those new opportunities. In October 2007, torture for the first time became a recognized crime, though no prosecutions for the crime of torture had occurred by August 2008. In early 2008, the PSD assigned prosecutors to investigate abuses at all prisons and allowed the National Center for Human Rights to set up an office inside Swaqa prison, though critical reporting about a prison riot there in April 2008 led the PSD to stop its cooperation with the center. Everyday living conditions were at the forefront of prisoners’ complaints to Human Rights Watch. Prison conditions remain poor, lacking adequate health care, in particular psychiatric care. Around one percent of prisoners had been hospitalized for psychiatric care at the times of our visits. Sanitary facilities are also poor, drinking water is often not available and stale, and food is meager. The larger prisons did not provide adequate facilities for visitation or a prisoner’s access to telephones. None of the prisons had newspapers or journals available in adequate numbers so prisoners could remain informed about important news. These unnecessary limits on a prisoner’s contact with the outside world drew frequent calls by prisoners for more access to telephones, visitation time, and news. Jordan’s two year-old prison reform program plans to remedy the situation of poor sanitary facilities, visiting space, and few telephones by building nine new prisons to be completed next year. One of the new prisons will be a 240-cell super-maximum security prison, Muwaqqar II. Such “supermax” prisons were designed to house incorrigibly violent inmates in separate isolation cells. They have fallen out of favor in the United States twenty years after they were first built there because of the debilitating impact of solitary confinement on prisoners. By April 2008, the reform program had not delivered better health services, food, or visiting facilities for prisoners. New prosecutors assigned to the prisons and the opening of an office in Swaqa prison by the National Center for Human Rights have not tangibly improved accountability for torture. The government had not addressed key deficiencies in the impartiality of current investigations, prosecutions, and trials of alleged perpetrators of torture. Human Rights Watch recommends that the government of Jordan redirect its efforts to reform its prisons toward increased accountability for abuses by security authorities. The PSD should devise a new, independent complaints mechanism for prisoners that safeguards their anonymity and protects them from prison officials. It should refer investigations into abuse by officials from police to civilian prosecutors, to be tried in civilian courts, not the Police Court. The government should grant Jordanian and international human rights organizations continued access to prisoners as a means to verify improvements in preventing and addressing torture. In particular Jordan should sign and ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture, and which will ensure that the Sub-Committee of the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment can visit without giving notice and that Jordan creates an independent inspection mechanism. The Ministry of Health should step up the provision of health care to prisoners by providing more doctors and psychiatrists who conduct entry examinations and also routinely inspect the wards. Human Rights Watch further recommends that Jordan’s donors, especially the European Union and the United States, make accountability for torture and prison reform an essential pillar of their development aid to improve the human rights record in the security sector in the kingdom. The EU and the US should make parts of their development assistance conditional on Jordan’s setting up an effective civilian prison inspection mechanism and the referral of prosecutions to civilian prosecutors and courts. |