24128: (pub) Chamberlain: Haitian Prisons (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By DAVID B. CARUSO

   PHILADELPHIA, Jan 21 (AP) -- Haitian prisons may be dirty, rat infested
and have so little space that prisoners have to sleep standing up, but the
mere act of jailing someone in them does not amount to torture, a federal
appeals court has ruled.
   A three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled
Thursday that the federal government may legally deport a convicted drug
dealer to Haiti, even though he is likely to be imprisoned there in jails
"notorious for their brutal and deplorable conditions that have been
compared to those existing on slave ships."
   Napoleon Bonaparte Auguste, who is being thrown out of the United States
for selling cocaine, had argued that returning him to Haiti would violate
an anti-torture treaty.
   By the court's own account, temperatures in the tiny, overcrowded cells
can reach 105 degrees, and there are often no washbasins or toilets;
prisoners must relieve themselves in buckets or plastic bags, which are
often not collected for days.
   Little food or water is provided. Tuberculosis, AIDS and malnutrition
are rampant.
   "There is no doubt that the prison conditions that Auguste and others
like him may face upon their removal to Haiti are indeed miserable and
inhuman," Judge Julio Fuentes wrote in the 3rd Circuit's decision.
   But the court said Haiti's prisons were awful because the country was
poor and unstable, not because authorities there were intentionally cruel.
   Auguste, 27, had been a permanent resident of the United States since
1987. The government moved to deport him after he served a 10-month
sentence for a drug charge in New York.