Senior Magistrate Kumba Sillah-Camara of the Bundung Magistrates Court, on Monday, sentenced one Peter Ekwueme to a fine of D5,000, in default to serve five months in jail.

In addition, the convict was ordered by Magistrate Kumba Sillah-Camara to pay a compensation of D5,000 to the complainant, in default to serve another four months in jail. The sentences are to run concurrently.

Peter Ekwueme was found guilty of attempting to rape a six-year-old girl (name withheld).
Peter Ekwueme first pleaded not guilty when the charge sheet was read to him but later changed his plea to guilty.

Kebba Sanyang, counsel for the accused, pleaded for the court to temper justice with mercy. According to Lawyer Sanyang, his client is a young man and has no previous offence record. 
“Also, he has been law abiding since he came to this country,” the counsel declared.
Corporal 758 Sarr represented the IGP in the trial.

According to the particulars of the offence, Ebrima Jawoh a herdsman fed his cows in President Jammeh Rice Farm at Fulaleh in Janjangbureh.

In passing his sentence, Chief Jawo stated that he had issued a series of warning for herdmen to take their herds away from the farming area to avoid grazing on people’s farms.

He said any herdsman who failed to heed the warning would be dealt with accordingly.

Janjangbureh tribunal presided over by Seyfo Bakary Jam Jawo recently fined one Ebrima Jawoh the sum of D3,000, in default to serve three months’ imprisonment for allowing his cattle to graze on President Jammeh’s Farm.

According to the particulars of the offence, Ebrima Jawoh a herdsman fed his cows in President Jammeh Rice Farm at Fulaleh in Janjangbureh.

In passing his sentence, Chief Jawo stated that he had issued a series of warning for herdmen to take their herds away from the farming area to avoid grazing on people’s farms.

He said any herdsman who failed to heed the warning would be dealt with accordingly.

Prison conditions in Benin are so deplorable that they were, alongside police brutality, one of two reasons that compelled the international human rights watchdog Amnesty International to list the country in its annual State of the World's Human Rights report for the first time in 2008.

Prisons suffer from overcrowding, cases of unjustified detention, a lack of trained prison staff and lack of adequate food, according to the report.

Amnesty highlights Abomey prison 150km north of Cotonou in central Benin which it says holds up to six times as many prisoners as it was designed to. The prison in the capital, Cotonou, holds 2,445 prisoners in a facility set up to house 400.

A separate research report published in June 2008 by Beninese non-governmental and human rights organisations including Amnesty International Benin (AI) and the Organisation for the Defence of Prisoners' Interests (DDP) also highlighted the poor conditions for the approximately 800 children who are held alongside adults in the country's prisons.

According to AI, "Women and children are particularly vulnerable and live in precarious conditions in prisons. A large number of women are detained with their children and have to give birth without an attendant physician." Youth offenders are not tried in special juvenile courts, flouting international norms.

"Prison overcrowding is a serious human rights problem," said Thierry Alliah, director of human rights at the Beninese ministry of justice. "That is why we will not stop making sure those in power are aware of the gravity of the situation - it could be a fatal blow to our country's image."

Why

According to Alliah the problems stem from the country's dysfunctional justice system. "Trials are not always fair… people awaiting trial are not always judged according to the nature of their crime," he said, and as a result prisoners may be given arbitrarily long sentences. Trials can drag on for years and can suffer interruptions of up to four years at a time, according to Alliah.

Many of the prisoners languish for ten years or more without having a trial, he said. "There are more people awaiting trial than those tried in prisons… they haven't been tried because we don't have enough judges to try them," he said.

"We need to… distinguish the guilty and innocent so we do not keep innocent people in prison," he said.

There is no formal training available for judges in Benin and the few judges who do operate are often on strike demanding higher salaries and cost of living stipends, according to Alliah. And now clerks are following suit.

Government actions

The government has been aware of the problems for many years but has not prioritised it, according to Olatounde Cambopas, an independent legal adviser.

A bill was passed in 2001 to install 28 civil courts around the country, but no action was ever taken to set them up, and as such "we are still working with the eight courts left over from the previous justice system," which dates back to the French colonial era, he said.

There has been some progress however. In 2007 the Minister of Justice, Legislation and Human Rights conducted a tour of the country's detention centres to ascertain if conditions had improved since first being highlighted by Amnesty International in 2003. According to a December 2007 statement, "the results of the survey… found a significant improvement in conditions over the course of the year."

Meanwhile in 2003 the government introduced a plan to recruit 30 additional magistrates annually, and to build 10 additional prisons by 2010. Alliah is optimistic that these plans will be realised.

"You can't say the government hasn't done anything to address this situation, and hopefully in two years time we will have enough civilian prisons to decongest the current ones, and adequate numbers [of magistrates]," he pointed out.

Not enough

Amnesty International wants deeper and faster reform. Recruitment of judges must be sped up, judges should accelerate investigation and trial proceedings and should clearly outline fair custody periods, and court sessions should meet more regularly, and youth offenders should be give the benefits of special trials and separate detention quarters it says.

But Campos looks to alternative justice mechanisms to settle the problem, and proposes setting up 'conciliation courts' where victims and offenders can meet to discuss and confront the crime committed thereby reducing the number of prisoners, particularly minors, who are detained.

Whether or not the government will embrace such proposals remains to be seen but advocates are not giving up. "We must maintain permanent pressure on the authorities to change the situation we are in today," NGOs and human rights organisations announced in their report.

IRIN 

Ayoub John Njie, a magistrate in Brikama, Gambia, has said that he will acquit all people detained for 72 hours without charge, due to the fact that he believes detention for more than three days is unconstitutional.

Section 19 (1) of the Gambian constitution says that "no one shall be subject to arbitrary arrest or detention. No one shall be deprived of his or her liberty except on such grounds and in accordance with such procedures as established by law." Njie stated that he believes that detention for over 72 is depriving someone of their liberty without sending the person through the "procedures as established by law."

Njie, who works at Brikama Magistrates Court, said that "I stand for justice and I also stand to assist the government for justice to prevail.

The incident started when Dida Halake, former managing director of the Daily Observer was acquitted on these grounds, and these statement by the judge were made in the case of Amadou Kah, who is accused of stealing goats.

Wikinews 

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Sex between prison inmates is a reality at Manica Provincial Prison, in central Mozambique, but because same-sex relations are taboo, and conjugal visits are not allowed, many HIV-positive inmates say they were infected before they were sent to the largest prison in Manica Province.

The reality is often different. "Based on the analyses we carried out, we found that some inmates were indeed infected before being locked up, but the majority was infected inside the jail," said Elsa Thaibo, director of the health department in Chimoio, who is also responsible for providing medical assistance to the prison located in the city.

Carlos Alid, 38, who was jailed in 2005 for counterfeiting money and has four more years left to serve, told IRIN/PlusNews: "Because of the lack of other options, some men seek what they should be getting from their wives or from other women, in men."

He discovered he was HIV positive after a voluntary test in prison, and suspects he was infected after becoming an inmate. Alid said some of the younger prisoners have sex with older ones in exchange for food and protection, especially since many do not enjoy the support of their families. The sex does not always include condoms.

HIV behind bars

The prison, located near a mountain with the shape of man's head, known as "Cabeça de Velho" (old man's head in English), has an HIV prevalence rate of 4.5 percent among the approximately 1,000 inmates, according to official data.

"It's been very difficult to keep this [HIV] outside. You can't see it coming and it's impossible to see it being transmitted," said prison director Francisco Mate.
Between January and May of 2008, 43 of the 246 of the prisoners examined – both men and women – were diagnosed as HIV positive; of these, eight are taking antiretroviral (ARV) treatment.

UNAIDS has encouraged the authorities to acknowledge that sex between men occurs, and that preventative measures be adopted. Nevertheless, three years ago, several prisons in Mozambique rejected the proposal that condoms be distributed to inmates, arguing that there was no homosexual activity taking place in prisons.

This is slowly changing. "The government already understands that the distribution of condoms in jails does not promote homosexuality, but rather contributes toward HIV prevention. That's why it's begun to distribute them," said Thaibo.

Besides unprotected sexual relations, specialists point to needle sharing to inject drugs and unsterilised tattooing instruments as factors that could contribute to the spread of HIV in the nation's prisons.

"Prison authorities are unable to control the high-risk practices," said David Demo, 33, who has been in prison for two years for homicide.

Signs of change

But prevention means more than just condom distribution. In addition to giving out free condoms, the group Shinguirirai (support, in the Shona language) holds lectures and education sessions, provides psychological assistance and helps prisoners stick to their ARV treatment regimen.
Rui João, 27, in the prison's high-security wing for the murder of a neighbour in 2006, discovered he was HIV positive in September 2007 and began taking ARVs. He is now one of Shinguirirai's activists and gives other prisoners information about AIDS, and supports those on treatment.

Prison employees are also included in the awareness-raising campaigns, and with the support of the Provincial Nucleus for the Fight Against AIDS, Shinguirirai organised courses last year for both prison workers and inmates.

According to João, prison conditions are not ideal for HIV-positive individuals to live healthy lives, such as a nutritious diet and an adequate environment, which are fundamental to the success of ARV treatment.

Some NGOs and religious institutions have sought to make up for these shortcomings with balanced meals and medical assistance for HIV-positive inmates on two Saturdays a month, but the need persists.

Even so, prison director Mate believes there are signs of change. "There was a time when a considerable number of inmates died because of a lack of care, but this has gone down now because it's not easy for a prisoner to see a fellow inmate die. Little by little, we're managing to get somewhere."

PlusNews  

Dr Michael Kyomya is responsible for the health of almost 5,000 inmates in Uganda's Luzira Prison, but his caseload is not the biggest challenge - the architecture is. The high walls just outside his office in the prison's medical facility not only keep the prisoners in, but also infectious diseases like tuberculosis (TB).

"Before, [designing prisons] was about restricting points of escape, not ventilation for those inside," Kyomya told IRIN/PlusNews. When Luzira was built in 1927, the population of Uganda was about four million; today it is about 30 million, but the prison has never been expanded or remodelled.

The facility was built to house 600 inmates but now holds more than six times that number. "Prison acts as an incubator for disease," said Dr Johnson Byabashaija, the commissioner of prisons. The national prison population is growing at a rate of roughly 10 percent per year.

It is impossible to say just how many inmates have TB, but Uganda Prisons Service officials estimate the rate of infection at about 20 percent, and that about half of these cases are co-infected with HIV. An inmate population of about 26,000 means there are more than 5,000 with TB and about 2,500 with both HIV and TB.

With an estimated 80,000 new TB infections occurring annually, Uganda is ranked 15th on World Health Organisation list of 22 countries that bear 80 percent of the global TB burden. Uganda also has one of the lowest TB cure rates in the world – about 32 percent - according to a 2008 WHO report.

Kyomya put the cure rate in prisons at about 20 percent, and attributed the high level of respiratory diseases primarily to the lack of ventilation, poor health facilities, and other problems in the prison system. According to Byabashaija, TB and other respiratory infections are the leading cause of mortality in the prison system, with about 200 deaths annually.

Poor disease management and risk of re-infection

Luzira holds about five percent of Uganda's prisoners, and is one of the only facilities with any kind of medical care. Inmates at other prisons are often referred to district medical facilities, which sometimes do not have the resources to treat sick prisoners.

An inmate from the western district of Mbarara, who declined to give his name, told IRIN/PlusNews he was moved from the prison near his home to a jail in Jinja, east of the capital, Kampala, and forced to do hard labour, even though his wardens knew he was HIV-positive. After he collapsed in 2007, he was transferred to the medical facility at Luzira, where he was diagnosed with TB.

He will stay in the medical facility at Luzira until his TB is no longer considered 'active' or infectious, which can take from two weeks to several months, but prisoners are often returned to the general wards while they are still contagious, and if one person in the overcrowded cells has TB, it is likely that within days other prisoners will also be infected.

The lack of a centralised record keeping system means doctors struggle to follow up prisoners, who are often transferred between institutions or discharged before consulting medical personnel for a service referral at the inmate's next destination.

Kyomya said the fact that there were no isolation wards also led to unnecessary re-infection. Samuel Kizza, 39, became infected with TB at Luzira in 2004 and now has it again. His doctor said if a prisoner has had TB in the recent past and again comes in contact with the disease, he has little chance of avoiding re-infection, especially if his immune system is weakened by HIV.

The Uganda Prisons Service is building new prisons in several areas of western and northern Uganda, while renovating other prisons around the country, and recently partnered with the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC).

Pilot programmes are being run at Luzira and two other facilities, with the aim of building capacity in the prison service to improve prisoners' health by strengthening diagnosis, care and prevention.

PlusNews 

Abdoulie was found guilty of stealing 180,000 CFA from a certain lady at the Banjul ferry terminal and was, therefore, sentenced to serve twelve months in jail with hard labour.