Kampala, Uganda | GODFREY SSALI | The patron of Boda-Boda 2010 and also Rubaga NRM Chairman Abdalla Kitata and 11 other people on Tuesday appeared before the General Court Martial in Makindye where they faced charges of unlawful possession of firearms and military stores. However they all refused to plead to …
Read More »Iran grants US citizen four-day release from prison
Washington, United States | AFP | Iranian authorities granted a four-day leave on humanitarian grounds Sunday to Baquer Namazi, the oldest of a group of American citizens known to be held in the Islamic Republic. His lawyer Jared Genser said that Namazi, an 81-year-old former UNICEF official, cannot leave Iran …
Read More »Ethiopia frees prominent opposition leader
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia | AFP | Prominent Ethiopian opposition leader Merera Gudina was freed from jail on Wednesday after the government dropped charges against him as part of a wider prisoner amnesty, state media reported. In his first reported comments after his release, Merera urged the government to hold “honest …
Read More »Drugs, booze and violence in Brazil prisons revealed in cell videos
Brasília, Brazil | AFP | Inmates lining up to snort cocaine, booze-fueled parties, and brazen escapes: these unfiltered images from inside Brazil’s prisons are offering outsiders a graphic picture of the anarchic conditions in one of the world’s most populous penitentiary systems. Surviving Brazil’s prisons is certainly not a given. Nine …
Read More »Spain transfers migrants from jail after suicide
Madrid, Spain | AFP | Spanish authorities said Wednesday they had transferred migrants being controversially accommodated at a jail just two weeks after an Algerian man was found hanging in his cell in an apparent suicide contested by his brother. The lawyer for the victim’s family said some of the migrants …
Read More »Pistorius injured in prison brawl over phone
Johannesburg, South Africa | AFP | Former Paralympic champion and convicted murderer Oscar Pistorius has been injured in a prison brawl over the use of a public phone, a South African official said on Tuesday. The double amputee — who is serving a 13-year jail term for the murder of …
Read More »Brazil’s prison population doubles in decade: government
Brasília, Brazil | AFP | Brazil’s prison population more than doubled between 2005 and 2016 and cells are now so crowded that there are almost two people for every space, the justice ministry said Friday. With 726,712 detainees in June 2016, Latin America’s biggest country now has the third highest prison …
Read More »Over 90 inmates from Luzira plead guilty to capital offences
Kampala. Uganda | GODFREY SSALI | Over 90 inmates from Luzira prison facing capital offences have enrolled for the plea bargain programme in which they have confessed to having committed these offences in exchange for lenient sentences. They Wednesday appeared before Kampala High Court Judge Wilson Kwesiga and pleaded guilty to …
Read More »Sacked Catalan parliament speaker is freed on bail
Madrid, Spain | AFP | The sacked speaker of Catalonia’s parliament left a prison near Madrid on Friday hours after supporters posted her bail of 150 000 euros ($175,000), ending her brief detention over the region’s controversial independence drive. A judge at the Supreme Court in Madrid on Thursday had …
Read More »Costa Rica presidential candidates hold debate in prison
San José, Costa Rica | AFP | Seven candidates to become Costa Rica’s next president went behind bars to hold an unusual debate in a prison where they answered inmates’ questions about their election platforms. “I hope you feel at home,” one of the prisoners said as the seven politicians …
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