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Other Prison Abuses

Under international law, prisoners have most of the same rights as persons not deprived of their liberty, such as rights to an adequate standard of life, including access to the highest available standards of health,⁵⁹ and to adequate food and drink.⁶⁰ Due to their confinement, prisoners also have special rights to contact with the outside world.⁶¹ Courts may deprive persons of their liberty as punishment for criminal acts, but not of these other rights. In Jordanian prisons in 2007, however, inmates suffered from untreated health conditions, ate poorly and often had unnecessarily limited contact with the outside world.

Health Services

Medical doctors regularly serve all Jordanian prisons, but our research indicates that access to health care and its quality is deficient. The administration of services fails to meet even the requirements of Jordanian law for health care in prisons. The Ministry of Health administers health care in prison, but the prison director from the Ministry of Interior has immediate authority over medical staff.

In Aqaba prison, with a capacity of 192, doctors only visited three times a week, according to the prison director.⁶² This made it impossible to abide by Jordan’s Law on Correction and Rehabilitation Centers requiring the prison authority to administer a medical examination upon an inmate’s admission to a prison and before placing him in solitary confinement.⁶³ In Juwaida prison, the pharmacist told us that two prison doctors working on alternate days are responsible for both the men’s and the separate, but adjoining, women’s prison.⁶⁴ The prison doctor said he sees 150 patients each day.⁶⁵ If the doctor is at the men’s prison, he is unavailable to see women patients, and vice versa.⁶⁶ In Swaqa, Jordan’s biggest prison, five doctors try to care for over 2,000 inmates.⁶⁷ In Muwaqqar, two doctors cared for 896 inmates on the day of our visit.⁶⁸

The prison doctor in Birain, a smaller detention facility, told Human Rights Watch that he treats 70 or more cases every day.⁶⁹ Doctors usually have the assistance of a nurse, but no further help. In each of Birain, Qafqafa, Muwaqqar, Juwaida and Swaqa, one or two prisoners asked Human Rights Watch during our visit to inform the prison doctor and the director that they had been unable to obtain health care.⁷⁰ In Juwaida, a new arrival said he was afraid he would miss a long-scheduled operation due to his recent incarceration.⁷¹ Another prisoner there showed us his visibly broken arm with part of his bone protruding under the skin.⁷² Hospital doctors first treating him, before his arrest, said his arm would need an operation before being set, but the prison director had not coordinated with the hospital and he had not received the operation.⁷³ Prisoners complained that doctors treat any ailment with simple pain killers and do not provide more specialized care.⁷⁴ A Juwaida prisoner complaining of disc problems in his back said “the doctor is only here from 8 a.m. until 11 a.m. He is very bad and only gives you ibuprofen [pain killer].” Some saw the doctor as their enemy, saying “the doctor treats you like he wants to beat you.”⁷⁵

Prisoners do not under Jordanian law have the right to seek a second medical opinion by a different doctor, although Muwaqqar prison director Rakat al-Hallalat said that he generally allows prisoners to continue to see their existing specialist doctors if they have pre-existing medical conditions.⁷⁶ He does not allow them to bring in their own medicines, however.⁷⁷ International standards provide for the right of a prisoner to seek a second medical opinion.⁷⁸

Frequent health complaints involve respiratory problems, aggravated by incessant smoking inside dormitory wards with between 28 and 50 beds per room. One prisoner told Human Rights Watch that he has “asthma and a lung infection … and take[s] 12 pills a day… The air in here is bad, fetid. I sleep near the door because of the air that comes in under the door… I wanted to be moved to a different prison where I could breathe fresh air. They refused.”⁷⁹

The regulations accompanying the prison law guarantee each prisoner “health service sufficient … for his medical needs.”⁸⁰ International norms dictate that “The medical officer [of the prison] … should daily see all sick prisoners, all who complain of illness, and any prisoner to whom his attention is specially directed.”⁸¹

In addition to general physicians, prisons provide the services of dentists, psychiatrists, and, occasionally, dermatologists. The Aqaba prison doctor reported that he refers two to three cases per day to the psychiatrists. At the time of Human Rights Watch’s visit, prison authorities had transferred four persons at the 650 capacity Birain prison, seven inmates at the 500 prisoner capacity Salt prison, and 17 of the 1140 prisoners at Juwaida to Fuhais mental hospital, which accommodates mentally ill prisoners. In the larger prisons, a psychiatrist visits once every week or two.⁸²

These services appear to be wholly inadequate for the mental health needs of the prison population. The ICRC in February and March 2008 conducted an assessment of the health care provisions in Jordan’s prisons. While its findings remain confidential, a participating ICRC doctor in August told the media that “manpower has clearly been the most lacking resource… 13 psychiatrists are currently serving the Kingdom, working in 30 clinics in addition to the country’s 10 correctional facilities.”⁸³

Jalil, a prisoner at Qafqafa prison told Human Rights Watch, “I have asked to see a doctor to speak about my mental health but have not been able to do so. I have asked for one month now. I am depressed and often get angry.”⁸⁴ The mental state of this prisoner’s neighbor, also in solitary confinement, made him apparently unable to respond to Human Rights Watch’s questions. A prisoner in Swaqa also appeared to be mentally disturbed, unable to follow a normal conversation, but had not received specialized psychiatric care.⁸⁵ Another prisoner in Juwaida who had been on psychiatric medication for 12 years and had recently spent one month as a patient in Fuhais mental hospital told Human Rights Watch that “the psychiatrist comes once a month. He was here two weeks ago, but I didn’t get to see him. My family tried to get me my medication, but couldn’t. In here, if you complain too much, they put you in solitary.”⁸⁶

The confinement of inmates in solitary cells no doubt has a significant negative impact on inmates’ mental health. Qafqafa’s solitary confinement cells are underground, without natural light, locked with heavy steel doors in a dank and fetid environment. All inmates on death row also are in solitary confinement, and prison directors used short-term solitary confinement as a frequent disciplinary measure.⁸⁷ Three prisoners in Juwaida separately told Human Rights Watch about a “black room,” called “the pharmacy,” where guards sent them for punishment, sometimes lasting up to one month. This room was bigger than a solitary cell, and accommodated three or four prisoners at a time, but let in no light.⁸⁸

According to the medical professionals we interviewed, neither psychologists nor general physicians treat prison rapes. Rape in prison is a common occurrence, one former prisoner and four current prisoners in three different prisons told Human Rights Watch.⁸⁹ They spoke in German, English or French so that Arabic speaking fellow prisoners could not understand them. Doctors do not provide condoms.

Human Rights Watch learned of two suicides in Qafqafa prison, one on April 14, the other on August 14, 2007, and spoke to fellow prisoners about the incidents. Both prisoners hung themselves, allegedly following heavy beatings. One fellow prisoner told Human Rights Watch that his cellmate showed signs of depression the night after the beating and that his body showed many bruise marks.⁹⁰

The Castor Oil Treatment

All prison directors informed Human Rights Watch about recent discoveries of smuggled drugs and weapons. Commonly, they said, prisoners ingest balloons filled with psychiatric pills or razor blades or other sharp objects.⁹¹ When prison guards suspect a new inmate or a prisoner returned from a court hearing or hospital of bringing in illegal substances, they force him to eat three to eight castor oil pills that rapidly cause diarrhea. One prison director openly told Human Rights Watch that the prison buys the pills on the open market.⁹²

Prisoners told Human Rights Watch about the inhumane and degrading procedures of the castor oil treatment. In Muwaqqar, a prisoner told us that guards made over one dozen new arrivals sit naked in a row on buckets waiting for the pills to start working, usually within 30 minutes. One prisoner, Lu’ai, told Human Rights Watch “I had to go to the toilet, but the guards refused. The pills make you defecate after one minute. They brought me a bowl but I didn’t want to do it there in front of them, so I said ‘I am going to soil myself, and it will stink.’ They slapped me, but brought me to the toilet.”⁹³ In Birain prison, Human Rights Watch spoke to a prisoner who said that guards had forced him to swallow eight pills when he arrived. Two days later, he was still lying in bed, too weak to get up because of the violent diarrhea caused by the pills.⁹⁴ In Juwaida, a prisoner had no complaints about his treatment except for having been forced to swallow three castor oil pills upon arrival.⁹⁵

Prison officials admitted to forcing prisoners to swallow castor oil pills, but insisted it was the lesser of two evils: “We do not have the facilities to x-ray every prisoner to discover ingested balloons with drugs. So we give them castor oil.”⁹⁶ Such facilities exist in hospitals, but officials shun the expense and time to refer most prisoners there. The EU assistance program has put out a tender for equipment for the detection of illicit objects for use in prisons by June 2008.⁹⁷ In July 2008, the director of prison service, Sharif al-‘Umari, informed Human Rights Watch that he had stopped the use of castor oil pills as a laxative in prisons.⁹⁸

Food, Water, Hygiene

Prisoners in all prisons complained about the quantity and quality of their food. Human Rights Watch saw lunch being served in most prisons we visited. Prisoners at Qafqafa prison told us that that day’s portions were bigger, and there was an added vegetable on account of our visit.⁹⁹ Lunch consisted of a bowl of rice with one or two cubes of meat or chicken and a vegetable sauce. One prisoner told Human Rights Watch that he frequently has to buy a can of tuna from the prison shop in order not to go hungry.¹⁰⁰ Another prisoner said the food was generally sufficient, but badly cooked and tasteless. He complained that there were no special meals for persons with diabetes like him.¹⁰¹ Breakfast and dinner usually consisted of one egg and a piece of bread with half a cucumber or tomato. All prisoners complained about the water they had to drink, saying it smelled foul. In Qafqafa, prisoners filled huge plastic barrels full of water in the showers, to serve them as drinking water, because the administration frequently turned off the water during the day. A Swaqa prisoner complained of “too little food and water that is not good to drink.”¹⁰²

The prison regulations stipulate that the prison provide “food of a sufficient nutrional quality” and that it “must provide every inmate with drinking water whenever he needs it.”¹⁰³

The sanitary conditions were generally poor, especially at the older prisons like Juwaida, Qafqafa and Swaqa. Prisoners at Swaqa complained about toilets “covered with mould, and fungi … causing fungous disease on the feet.”¹⁰⁴ Solitary confinement cells in particular were filthy. The cells contained a toilet hole in the floor without running water, separated only by a low wall from the rest of the one meter by two meter cell. An Egyptian man in administrative detention was in a solitary confinement cell in Swaqa that stank of feces. This 69-year old man had only one blanket to sit on while he continued his hunger strike to protest his detention.¹⁰⁵ Another prisoner in Salt did not even have a blanket.¹⁰⁶

Contact with the Outside World

Contact with the outside world is an essential right of prisoners. International standards dictate that prisoners must be allowed “communicate with their family and reputable friends at regular intervals, both by correspondence and by receiving visits,” and that they must be informed of important news by “reading of newspapers, periodicals or special institutional publications, [and] by … wireless transmissions.”¹⁰⁷ A prosecutor or prison director cannot arbitrarily withdraw a prisoner’s rights to such contact: International standards require that “communication of the detained or imprisoned person with the outside world, and in particular his family or counsel, shall not be denied for more than a matter of days.”¹⁰⁸

Jordan’s prisons only afford prisoners limited contact with the outside world, whether they are unconvicted detainees or sentenced prisoners. The number of telephone booths is insufficient for the number of prisoners, the paucity of visiting booths cuts short visits with family to mere minutes. Prisoners may only receive relatives, although the prison service said it wanted to approve friends as visitors in the near future.¹⁰⁹ Prisoners occasionally have access to newspapers, and generally can watch Jordanian television, but have difficulty accessing books and periodicals.

The directors of Qafqafa and Swaqa prisons, Jordan’s largest, said that they only had enough telephones to allow prisoners one call per month.¹¹⁰ ‘Aql, a prisoner sentenced to 20 years in Swaqa prison, complained that prison authorities allowed him to make only one telephone call to his family each month. This non-Tanzimat prisoner said he requested more frequent calls, but that the Preventive Security and the prison director, who must both agree, had recently refused.¹¹¹ Another prisoner in Qafqafa, Murad, said that while the authorities had allowed him to make one phone call upon admission three weeks earlier, they had denied all further requests for calls.¹¹² However, prisoners in other facilities such as Birain said they faced few problems accessing the telephone.¹¹³ A prisoner in Juwaida said he was able to send faxes to the governor of Amman protesting his detention.¹¹⁴

Long queues of visitors for only around 20 – 40 visiting booths at Swaqa and Qafqafa prisons meant that prisoners did not get more than five minutes to a maximum of 15 minutes visiting time with their relatives. Prisoner Ra’id told Human Rights Watch that these short visits had become too painful for him, because he could barely spend time with his children, so he preferred that they did not visit.¹¹⁵ Another prisoner beseeched Human Rights Watch to call his wife to come because she had not visited in 35 days. When we called, she said the trip to the prison was too expensive for just a few minutes.¹¹⁶

Prisons allow only immediate family to visit inmates. Jalil, a death row inmate told Human Rights Watch he had not had visitors for over one year, because his father had repudiated him, and prison regulations did not allow his former colleagues to visit him, only first-degree relatives.¹¹⁷ The head of the prison service, Sharif al-‘Umari, told Human Rights Watch that the prisons are in the process of complying with prison regulations allowing for approved friends to visit.¹¹⁸

The prison libraries had a few hundred to a few thousand volumes according to the prison directors we interviewed. Prison authorities generally do not allow prisoners to keep their own reading materials. ‘Amr, a Swaqa prisoner told Human Rights Watch that “on June 23, [2007] they confiscated all items in the ward that were previously allowed by the warden, including books, clothes, and food bought by us from the prison. They took course books Usama Abu Hazim needs because he is doing two Masters [degrees] in prison, one in political science and one in engineering. These books took a long time of negotiation between us and the administration to obtain.”¹¹⁹ In Qafqafa, Jalil told Human Rights Watch that for unknown reasons, he had recently been unable to get the two daily newspapers available to prisoners, al-Ra’i and Addustour.¹²⁰ Nasir, a prisoner in Salt who had been in solitary confinement for three months after being sentenced to death complained that he had no news of the outside world and could not watch television like other prisoners.¹²¹

The directors did not take these measures out of a lack of availability or to ensure good order in the facilities. Indeed, both directors and especially the senior leadership of the PSD appeared keen on expanding libraries and access to news.¹²² International standards require that prisoners have access to “reasonable quantities of educational, cultural and informational material”¹²³ and that “Every institution shall have a library for the use of all categories of prisoners [who] shall be encouraged to make full use of it.”¹²⁴