FYROM prisons are rife with police brutality and drugs, watchdog says

Council of Europe document slams conditions, which are an obstacle to EU accession

Inmates hang out laundry on November 20 in Idrizovo Prison, which holds more than half of FYROM’s 2,300 prisoners, some 20 kilometers from the capital, Skopje.

SKOPJE (AFP) – Cramped, filthy and a haven for drugs, prisons in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) have come under heavy criticism over brutality and the degrading conditions suffered by their inmates.

In a report, the Council of Europe’s (CoE) anti-torture committee last month alleged police abuse of prisoners consisting “mostly of kicks, punches and blows with batons or various other objects.” “Inmates are currently being held in totally unacceptable living conditions in Idrizovo [prison where] squalid living conditions in an unsafe and unhygienic environment continue to prevail,” said the report.

FYROM Justice Minister Mihajlo Manevski admits the problems “are real,” telling AFP that “the biggest and worst prison, Idrizovo, has not been refurbished for 60 to 70 years.” But at Idrizovo, which holds more than half of FYROM’s 2,300 prisoners on the outskirts of the capital Skopje, media-shy inmates are reluctant to discuss such problems openly.

“This is not a spa resort, nor a five-star hotel. This is a prison, so the conditions are as they are,” a 26-year-old inmate told AFP from his tiny cell.

Under pressure to improve prisons as part of human rights issues that have dogged FYROM’s bid to join the European Union, the government says it is finally tackling the problem.

“We want and have to change the face of the prisons,” Manevski says, adding his government wants “to create optimal conditions for the prisoners and employees by 2011. All prisons in FYROM are going to be refurbished and 14 million euros is going to be spent on that,” including 10 million euros from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

“This is necessary in order for better quality and more humane conditions to be secured according to EU standards,” says the minister.

The prisons of Prilep and Stip already have been entirely renovated and some of Idrizovo’s inmates have since been moved there, while Kumanovo’s detention facility is being rebuilt.

The CoE findings were matched by similar reports by nongovernmental organizations such as the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights and the authorities themselves. Prison officials admit cells are packed, meaning convicts with shorter sentences can sleep on floor mats in small rooms with several other inmates serving longer terms for heinous crimes like murder.

” The capacity here is 900 prisoners, but at the moment we have 1,334, 51 of who are women and one is a minor,” says Idrizovo Prison Director Mile Mladenovski. “Overcrowding creates huge problems as sometimes we have to put 10 prisoners in a room for two,” Mladenovski explains, adding that authorities were trying to improve standards by providing more beds, mattresses and blankets.

Another growing problem within the walls of FYROM’s 13 prisons, however, is organized crime, including flourishing trade in illicit drugs. At Idrizovo alone, more than half of the inmates are thought to be drug addicts, turning the facility into a haven for trafficking that also involves prison staff, according to officials and the CoE report. Conditions are also bad for prison officers, who complain they are understaffed and unarmed but expected to stand watch as murder convicts roam freely within Idrizovo’s shabby confines. The Helsinki Committee’s Iso Rusi says the situation is “desperate” and “all institutions in the country are in agreement on this.”

STRASBOURG (Reuters) – Filth, violence and inhumane treatment are rife in several of Romania’s overcrowded prisons, a human rights watchdog said yesterday in a report on one of the EU’s newest member states.

Inspectors from the Council of Europe, who visited over a dozen police stations, prisons and psychiatric hospitals, described conditions in several as “inhuman or degrading.” “The majority of convicts and detainees were locked up in their cells for 23 to 23-and-a-half hours a day,” the report said, referring to prisons visited by anti-torture investigators.

The human rights watchdog said it found overcrowding in one prison in the city of Bacau meant inmates had on average around 1 meter (3.3 feet) of cell space, compared to the minimum 4.2 meters recommended by the group.

Cells for minors in the same prison were “an affront to human dignity,” the report said, highlighting one where 26 boys had to share 12 “threadbare beds infested with lice.” Violent injury was noted in other prisons described as decrepit.

Investigators also said electroshock and strait jackets were used in psychiatric hospitals where some patients suffered from malnutrition. They said they worried some were being used as guinea pigs in clinical medical trials. Romanian government officials were not available to comment regarding the findings on the country’s prisons. However, they said conditions at psychiatric hospitals and other special treatment units had improved significantly following EU entry in 2007, helped by a hefty investment of around 100 million euros ($132 million).