HRANA News Agency – The prisoners of Sanandaj prison, with ten wards and high population of prisoners face many problems in prisoners’ access to medical and sports facilities.
What follows is a brief report of the situation in Sanandaj prison that had been provided to HRANA News Agency:
– The Central Prison has 10 wards one of which belongs to prisoners who take methadone. Each ward has several rooms with 1.5 meters walls or has been separated by the beds and each room has 10 beds and 12 square meters in average. Each room has 20 to 25 people kept in there and usually half of the prisoners are deprived of having a bed to sleep and prisoners sleep on the floor and corridors, snugly together.
– There is a lack of separation of prisoners according to their crimes in Sanandaj prison, and prisoners, regardless of their alleged crimes, are kept together. The juvenile prisoners and the adult ones are held together in the same room, and also in order to put pressure on the political prisoners, they keep them together with the dangerous prisoners.
– Clinics and medical facilities: Although there is a clinic in the prison, but the access to it requires complicated procedures such as registration and waiting for several days. It has been happened many times that patients with severe pain such as pain caused by diabetes and kidney stones or stomach bleeding, were not sent to a hospital. It is notable that the prison medic, Doctor Behrooz Hassani, in some cases has opposed sending the prisoners to a hospital more than the prison security officials.
– Sports facilities: despite proper sports facilities such as a wrestling hall and so on in prison, but these facilities are to show off and are only open when the authorities come to visit the prison, and several selected prisoner are taken to the hall and a certain number of prisoners who have special position, such as espionage within the prison, can use the sport facilities.
– Drugs: If a prisoner wants a take a book inside the prison without difficulty, in terms of security issues, at the highest level of good luck and despite the prison authorities’ support, it takes more than a year. But thanks to corrupt prison staff, drugs and industrial psychotropic pills are widely used in the wards and from time to time, they introduce an imprisoned drug consumer, as accused, to judicial institutions, just for not to be left empty-handed.
– The so called and mandatory cultural activities in forms of religious customs and despite difficulty in accessing libraries and educational devices is done selectively and by a personal taste. The religious practices, such as telling the prayers and fasting are completely mandatory, and in the case of prisoners’ disagreement, the punishment tools such as prohibiting the visits, changing the ward, transferring to the addicted prisoners’ ward, banning from going on furlough, and being held in the solitary confinement, are used. These behaviors are done by considering political prisoners’ attitude and are thought to harass them.
– In the Central prison of Sanandaj, there is a part dedicated to the interrogators of Intelligence Office, where they are, and regardless to the judicial rules and articles, summon and interrogate political prisoners and put them under pressure and intimidate them.
– Choosing a ward representative: The relationship of prisoners with officials usually is done in such a way that abnormal prisoners with a history of multiple conflicts has priority and are selected and their usual activities is transferring and reporting violations inside the prison to the authorities.
– Communicating with the courts and judicial bodies is very difficult and prisoners’ correspondence with them, generally get lost and missing or procrastinated and ignored.
A Report About The Situation Of Central Prison Of Sanandaj
