BELGAInterior of the Antwerp prison (archive photo from 2017)
NOS News•today, 5:59 PM•Adjusted today, 6:53 PM
In Belgium, people are reacting with astonishment to the days-long torture of a prisoner by his cellmates in an Antwerp penitentiary.
Minister of Justice Paul Van Tigchelt calls the incident gruesome and disgusting. He says that the bottom stone must come up. An investigation is being conducted by the Antwerp judiciary and by the prison system itself.
Prison staff unions blamed the horrific incident on the “appalling and scandalous conditions” for staff and inmates. They point an accusing finger at the Belgian government, which has failed for years to end prison overcrowding.
Mario Heylen, warden at the Antwerp prison, said at a press conference. that “the dramatic scene” was allowed to play out because of the “marginal conditions in which staff have to work and detainees are housed.”
The unions share that view. Minister Van Tigchelt calls the conclusion premature, but is also under fire from the opposition, which wants to debate with him. “This incident is the direct result of years of mismanagement by the federal Minister of Justice,” said MP Sophie De Wit of the N-VA.
Brussels Correspondent Tijn Sadée:
“It is the fault of politicians who continue to look away, say Belgian trade unionists. The problem of overcrowded cells and a huge shortage of guards has existed for years. In 2016 it led to months of strikes by guards. Subsequent ministers then promised improvement, but things changed few.
The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture already issued a scathing assessment of Belgian prisons in 2016. ‘Unworthy of a civilized country like Belgium. Prisoners who have to relieve themselves in a bucket are something you don’t find anywhere in Europe anymore.’
Detainees ‘are being piled up like animals’, says the socialist trade union ACOD. Do people have to die first before politicians take action?, the ACOD wonders out loud.”
The Antwerp prison, where the torture took place, has been struggling with problems for years. “It should not be surprising that this happens exactly there,” says criminologist Tom Daems of KU Leuven.
The overcrowded old building symbolizes the problems in the Belgian prison system. Belgians have been struggling with overcrowded prisons for decades. Three men to a cell is no exception.
Daems wonders how it is possible that no one raised the alarm for three days. “It is also almost impossible to imagine that no one noticed anything in a prison that is so overcrowded.”
‘Long-standing problem’
The overpopulation problem has been dragging on for a long time, he sighs. “Every now and then it makes the news when the staff stands up against it.”
Tensions have reached a peak in recent weeks, the criminologist says. “That has to do with a record number of prisoners: an occupancy of 125 percent, you would not sell that to any hospital.” More than 12,000 people have been imprisoned since the beginning of this year.
In recent months, prison guards have regularly refused to admit more detainees. That has never happened before, Daems knows. “They are now also doing that in other prisons. They say: we have had enough, we are closing the gate. That is unprecedented.”
The prison director, among others, says he is shocked by the abuse:
Prisoner tortured for three days by cellmates in Antwerp
In 2014, a detainee went to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to complain about inhumane conditions in the Antwerp prison, and he was ruled in his favour.
Dutch prisoners sometimes successfully resisted extradition to Belgium. It led to the fact that many Dutch prisoners are only surrendered if Belgium guarantees that they will be treated in accordance with Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Belgian politics has made the overcrowding even worse by deciding to send more short-term prisoners (up to a prison sentence of 3 years) to penitentiary institutions. “Until recently, this was often done with electronic monitoring,” says Deams. “But they wanted to carry out part of that sentence in special detention houses. There were supposed to be fifteen of them, but there are still only two. Yet it continued, despite the crowds in the prisons.”
Added
Quite a few modern penitentiaries have been built in recent years to replace the outdated prisons. Conditions are better there, but they have not solved the problem of overcrowding.
Daems: “You see that those old buildings remain full, with all the tension that entails.”
The prison system is now trying to tackle the problem with a temporary measure: some prisoners can be given extended leave. But that only results in a few hundred places, says Daems. “That doesn’t make any difference. It’s a mop-up tap.”
2024-03-13 16:59:29
#Astonishment #disgust #Belgium #days #torture #prison
