AMMAN, JIB — King Abdullah on Sunday ordered the shut down of the Jafr prison and transform the facility into a school and a vocational training centre.

“I directed the government to immediately close down the Jafr prison and coordinate with the Public Security Department [PSD] to improve the infrastructure of correctional and rehabilitation centres,” King Abdullah told senior officials, including Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit, at the National Centre for Human Rights (NCHR) during a visit.

Reiterating his support for the centre, the Monarch called on the government to deal with NCHR reports in a “serious and transparent way”.
PSD Director Lt. General Mohammad Aitan told reporters that Jafr will be closed today and inmates will be transferred to other correctional facilities.

NCHR President Ahmad Obeidat, who highlighted the centre’s achievements in the past four years to enhance human rights in Jordan, hailed the decision.

Human rights activists as well as local and foreign NGOs, including NCHR, have demanded the shut down of Jafr because of “its poor services and evidence of human rights violations and torture”.

UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak, who issued a report on Jordanian prisons earlier this year, said the isolated desert penitentiary, 260km south of Amman, was “a punishment facility, where detainees were routinely beaten and subjected to corporal punishment, amounting to torture”. He urged the government to close down the prison.

NCHR board members, meanwhile, talked to the King about what they described as human rights “concerns that needed urgent action”.

Human rights activist Suleiman Sweiss said prisons were still overcrowded and lacked sufficient health services.

“The current correctional and rehabilitation programmes for inmates are weak,” Sweiss said.

According to Aitan, the PSD was working hard to upgrade prisons and announced that new correctional facilities were expected to be opened in 2007 and 2008.

“We have a strategic plan to improve the situation of prisons and allocated JD24 million to implement it. The main problem is crowdedness and once we overcome this issue, other problems will be solved gradually,” Aitan said.

There were around 6,000 inmates at the country’s 10 correctional facilities, according to the police chief.

Press Freedom

During the meeting, NCHR board member Saif Sharif, who is also the director general of Ad-Dustour newspaper, urged King Abdullah to ensure more freedoms for the local press and support the endorsement of proposed laws, designed to protect journalists.

“We fear that the recent incident between some deputies and journalists would reflect on the House’s debates and decisions on press and publications and other laws,” Sharif said.

King Abdullah immediately instructed Bakhit to address the issue with the Lower House.

“I fully support the quick endorsement of laws that ensures greater freedoms for the press and I have specifically mentioned them in the Speech from the Throne,” the King said yesterday.

Last week, some MPs assaulted, insulted and confiscated the cameras of three press photographers, who were taking pictures of a fistfight between two deputies. The incident prompted Al Rai, Ad-Dustour, Al Arab Al Yawm and Al Ghad dailies to boycott Parliament. They ended their boycott the next day after House Speaker Abdul Hadi Majali apologised.

Other NCHR board members spoke about the need to give more rights to women and called for increasing the JD110 minimum wage.

Established in 2001, the NCHR collects data, monitors and shares information on the well-being of children and families, and contributes to policy development.