LIBERIA: After touring major prison facilities across Liberia, the Regional Watch for Human Rights has labeled the Monrovia Central Prison (MCP) as a dungeon of pain, agony and death.
The Regional Watch for Human Rights PCP report recently released in Monrovia covered three departments at the Ministry of Justice.
Speaking doing a press conference held in Monrovia, the regional coordinator for the RWHR, Cllr. Tola Thompson Adebaryor, stated that the report was also intended to authenticate the persistent overcrowding at prison facilities and to uncover factors that lead to prison congestion in Liberia.
According to Cllr. Adebaryor The Rights group alarm was contained in it’s Police to Court-Court to Police (PCP) Report released at its 17th Street office in Sinkor, Monrovia recently.
He pointed out that some of the prison cells were constructed to accommodate atmost five inmates, but on the contrary approximately 270 to 300 inmates are in a cell supervised by two correction officers. The human rights lawyer at the same noted that said action is an act of triviality by successive governments.
He added that in 2015 the Regional Watch for Human Rights conducted a nationwide prison tour aimed at identifying and alleviating the suffering of prisoners, but contrarily the place continues to grow from worse to ridiculous every day; particularly the Monrovia CentralPrison.
The report also highlighted International Laws and standard practices of“Mandela Rules”, that says regardless of crime
Committed by person no one shall be subjected to any inhuman or degrading treatment or held in slavery or servitude.
Cllr Adebaryor told reporters that the Rights group obtained a permit from the Ministry of Justice to conduct prison visitation in Four Counties so as to follow up the gap UNMIL might have left behind and to also get response to public outcry of appalling prison conditions in Liberia. Regional Watch for Human Rights “fromPolicetoCourtandCourt
Cllr. Adebaryor uncovered that commercialization of justice has been the major cause of congestion in prisons where Magistrates, County
Attorney and Judges are capitulated into corrupt practices, treating misdemeanor offenses with levity just to demand money from the offenders or he or she gets rotten in prison once the individual can not meet up with such demand;
First degree felonious crimes such as armed-robbery, rape, murder etc. are being used to keep offenders in prison. The report further revealed.
Additionally, the regional coordinator of the human rights group disclosed that they also discovered that about 90% of Liberia
prisons are occupied by pre-trial detainees that have been behind bars for two to five years without trial, that which can be attributed to some sort of bottleneck created by magistrates, County–Attorney and Judges who normally
Conduct preliminary proceedings, while some don’t even have case files not to talk of alleged crime
Committed by them. He termed such attitude as unimaginable and terrible things that shouldn’t be seen in our prisons.
By: Tarr UB. Garnett. 0779053146
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