The prisoners on remand at the Juba National Prison on Monday complained about long detention without being arraigned in court and irregularities in the process of their conviction.
Speaking during a high-level inspection visit to the prison led by Interior Minister Angelina Teny, her deputy, and the justice minister among other officials, Nicola Nyieth Bullen, an inmate who has spent five years on remand awaiting trial complained of being remanded without trial for a long time, overcrowding in the cells and corruption, especially by the investigators who hide the files of suspects.
“The accommodation, this dormitory you are seeing is houses 215 and this is beyond its capacity because this dormitory is meant to accommodate 80 people. People are sleeping in shifts and others sleep in the toilets and bathrooms,” he lamented. “Investigators have become the biggest problem to us more than the people of the law. An investigator will be the one to take somebody to the prison and the person stays for three to five years behind bars without being arraigned before court.”
He added: “There was somebody who was brought here and he spent a long time then the person who accused him released him saying he has forgiven him but later the investigator brought him back to the prison and he died in prison. Who is then responsible for his death?”
He said some prisoners have been on remand for more than five years without the due process for conviction.
“We have people here whose files are before the Supreme Court and they have never seen the courtroom. And there are some people whose files are before the Court of Appeal but have never seen the courtroom,” he explained. “Is such a person considered convicted or on remand? Are we prisoners of war or citizens?”
Nyieth said a suspect is supposed to be arraigned in court within 48 hours but that the prison is now full of suspects with minor cases.
“Somebody is staying for three or four years because he is suspected of stealing a phone. There is somebody in the prison here with a case of a wheelbarrow for collecting rubbish. What will the law do to help such people?” he asked.
Among some of the complaints raised by the remand inmates are lack of drugs, lack of vehicles for transporting inmates to the court, poor quality of the food, congestion, and smuggling of narcotic drugs into the prison cells, among others.
The director of the Juba National Prison, Atok Atem, said the facility was constructed in the 1940s to accommodate at least 500 inmates but today they are accommodating over 500 percent of the capacity, including 196 convicts on death row, 659 other convicts, 1,618 remand inmates, 73 remanded juveniles, and 285 women.
“With this infrastructure and limitation, the administration is facing difficulties in managing the facility. ICRC used to support us by renovating the prison and maintaining hygiene and sanitation but now they stopped,” he said. “Despite the difficulties, we are exerting efforts to reduce the inmates by transferring some of them to other prisons, police detention facilities, and courts, especially when they are sick contrary to our mandate as prison service.”
According to Atem, hundreds of prisoners are taken to courts which say their files are not there.
“There are people who have spent more than four to five years without being taken to court,” he started.
The prison boss also recommends the construction of a maximum prison where prisoners will be treated humanely to safeguard their mental health.
Meanwhile, Justice Minister Ruben Madol Arol said he is aware of the challenges faced by the prison and he is working to address them decisively.
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