13566: Karshan: Prisoners freed from Haiti's National Peniteniary following Aristide visit (AP) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: MKarshan@aol.com

Prisoners freed from Haiti's national penitentiary following Aristide visit
Mon Nov 4, 1:51 PM ET
By MICHAEL NORTON, Associated Press Writer

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Authorities released 24 inmates held in preventive
detention for minor offenses following a visit by President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide to the capital's overcrowded national penitentiary, a newspaper
reported.

"Everything we do, we do in respect for human rights since we are building a
country where everyone must respect human's rights," Aristide told the
prisoners on Oct. 27, according to a transcript of his speech released by the
government on Monday.

A six-member commission of penal and justice ministry officials examined the
24 inmates' cases and ordered them released last week, Le Novelliste reported
in its weekend edition.

"All prisoners are humans, so their rights must be respected," Aristide said
during his visit, which coincided with International Prisoner's Day.

The commission will continue this month to examine cases at the penitentiary
and at Haiti's 18 other prisons with the aim of releasing more inmates from
preventive detention, acting government prosecutor Riquet Brutus was quoted
as saying in Le Novelliste.

About 82 percent of Haiti's 4,000 prison inmates have not been tried. At the
country's largest penitentiary, in downtown Port au Prince, only 201 of the
1,802 inmates have been convicted.

Human rights activists were hopeful the examination of cases would continue
and be extended nationwide.

"We don't want half measures. We demand a follow-up and a definitive solution
of the preventive detention problem," said Marie-Yolene Gilles, spokeswoman
for the National Coalition for Haitian Rights.

National penitentiary conditions have improved "significantly" in recent
months, Gilles said, but added that the improvements have not been extended
nationwide.

Literacy, language, and computer science courses are now offered in the
national penitentiary, and an athletic program has been initiated. A
prisoner's committee has been set up, and the inmates two-meal a day diet has
been improved, she said.