AcknowledgmentsThis report presents the findings of prison visits to seven of Jordan’s 10 prisons in August and October 2007 and April 2008 and of meetings with Jordanian security officials between August 2007 and July 2008. Christoph Wilcke of the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch is the principal researcher and author of this report. Joanne Mariner, director of the Terrorism / Counter-terrorism Program at Human Rights Watch and Gasser Abdel-Razek, until May 2008 acting director of regional relations for the Middle East and North Africa, conducted research for this report in August 2007. We express our appreciation to the officials in the Ministry of Interior and the Public Security Department for agreeing to our prison visits and always showing a readiness to meet and discuss current efforts to improve the prison system, in particular, Sharif al-‘Umari, director of the prison service, Mahir Shishani, head of the Grievances and Human Rights office, and Khalid al-Majali, deputy head of the prison reform program at the Royal Police Academy. We are grateful to those detainees and convicted prisoners who shared their concerns with us, often in spite of personal risk of retribution. We have substituted pseudonyms for their real names. We also hope that our work and this report justifies the trust placed in us by the families of prisoners affected in the incidents of torture in Aqaba prison in May 2007, in Swaqa prison in August 2007, and in Muwaqqar prison in April 2008. Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the Middle East and North Africa Division, and Iain Levine, director of the Program Office, edited the report. Clive Baldwin, senior legal advisor, provided legal review. Amr Khairy, Arabic language website and translation coordinator, provided assistance with translation into Arabic. Brent Giannotta and Nadia Barhoum, associates for the Middle East and North Africa Division, prepared this report for publication. Additional production assistance was provided by Grace Choi, director of publications, and Fitzroy Hepkins, mail manager. |