By Hassan Juana Koroma in Bo
The death of an inmate in the hands of his cellmates in Bo has raised questions about prison conditions in Sierra Leone.
Twenty-two year old Juana Brima died on April 4 from injuries he sustained from torture meted out on him a day earlier.
The management of the Bo Correctional Center confirmed the incident which occurred at the Male wing of the Centre which is located in Kortigbuma Section in Bo Town.
Sargent Adams Conteh, Deputy Officer in Charge of the Bo Correctional Center, said 16 inmates who shared the same cell with the deceased were currently under investigation, alongside two correctional officers.
According to statements obtained by the police from the inmates questioned, one suspect explained that every new inmate was required to go through a form of initiation that requires his fellow inmates to touch his penis. Juana’s reported refusal to abide by this de facto rule provoked anger among fellow inmates who resorted to violence to force him to comply.
There have been reports of homo sexuality in prisons in the past, it is not clear yet whether this was related to such. There are also questions surrounding how much knowledge the officers had about the practice of initiation in the correctional centers.
The Officer in Charge and his deputy in the Center were both transferred within a week of the incident. But before relocating to his new post in the Port Loko district, Superintendent Mohamed Opito Jimmy told Politico that he’d left Bo on April 3rd on an official assignment in Freetown, from where he received news of the incident.
Sgnt Conteh, who is now posted in Waterloo, explained that he was at his living quarter when his officers on duty reported to him that some inmates were fighting in Cell One. He said before he could make it to the scene, the commotion had ceased and the victim was in a bad shape.
But according to Conteh, their operational procedure meant that they couldn’t open the cell doors until the following morning, when the lifeless body of Juana was discovered.
According to the result of a postmortem conducted on the body, which was obtained from the police, the victim suffered intra cerebral hemorrhage, skull fracture and blunt force trauma - a head injury. The coroner’s report also revealed dislocation, fracture of the cervical vertebrae, and fracture of the right hand.
The newly transferred manager of the Center, Momodu Sillah, confirmed that no medical assistance was rendered to the deceased between his beating and death. Sillah said the Criminal Investigations Department of the Police in Bo was investigating the matter, and that 16 inmates have been questioned.
Sargent Mohamed Alie Conteh, Investigating Officer attached to the Bo West Police Station, confirmed that they were investigating the matter and noted that two correctional officers had also been questioned in relation to it.
The late Juana, who hails from Yenkeh Bagbo Chiefdom in Bo District, was a student of the Opportunity Industrialization Centre (OIC), where he was studying masonry when he was jailed after been convicted for larceny. He was serving a one year sentence after failing to fulfill the option of Le1Million fine. He died within a week of his incarceration.
The deceased’s elder sister, Betty Kallon, appealed to the authorities to ensure justice for the family.
Human rights activists say this incident is a sad illustration of an uncharted issue around the management of the national correctional system. Prison conditions in Sierra Leone have been the subject of widespread concern particularly due to reports of overcrowding and the consequent inhumane conditions inmates are subjected to.
Juana’s death in particular raised concerns over the safety of inmates in correctional centers.
Jeremy Ben Simbo, Regional Chairman of the Civil Society Forum in the Southern Region, said the incident points to a perennial problem of congestion in prison, lack of basic services for the inmates, and neglect on the part of the administrators of the correctional system.
Simbo, who is based in the Bo Town, said the issue also reemphasizes the need for capacity building for correctional officers.
“If they had adequate staff, they could have prevented this from happening,” he told Politico.
Simbo also said the situation contradicts the reported realities on the ongoing transformation from prison system to correctional system.
“We are talking about 21st Century correctional system and these people are talking about a correctional system, I don’t see anything happening there,” he said.
Despite a change from prison system to correctional system, observers say conditions in the country’s 19 correctional centers remain largely unchanged, characterized by overcrowding, poor sanitation conditions, among others. Lack of funding has seen prison facilities neglected without maintenance. The Bo Correctional Center represents a perfect example of this. Established in 1945, the facility has hardly received any serious rehabilitation, so that parts of its mud brick structures have been crumbling by parts, according to sources familiar with the inside of the facility.
The Bo Correctional Center, which is one of the oldest in the country and constructed to accommodate 80 people, is presently housing over 291 inmates, three times more than its normal capacity. Among its six cells, the lowest number of inmates in one of the rooms is nine. Cell One, where Juana was kept, had 28 inmates at the time, according to Sgnt Conteh. Cell three had 34 inmates.
Last year this issue of overcrowding in cells was a dominant subject of discussion during a visit to the facility by the Minister of Internal Affairs, Edward Solouku. At a meeting with the Minister, the inmates also complained of maltreatment in the hands of prison wardens.
The Center is also notorious for incarcerating juveniles among grownups.
(c) 2019 Politico Online
