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MANILA, Philippines (AFP) — Nine inmates were killed Friday when members of rival gangs in an overcrowded Philippine prison attacked each other using improvised knives, an official said, in one of the deadliest jail clashes in years. The pre-dawn fight broke out in suburban Manila’s New Bilibid Prison, the country’s largest, which holds more than 28,000 convicts in a complex designed for around 6,000. “We counted nine bodies,” said Gabriel Chaclag, spokesman for the Bureau […]
YANGON, Myanmar (AFP) — More than a quarter of Myanmar’s prison population is being released, the president’s office announced Friday, after calls grew to ease pressure on overcrowded jails with coronavirus fears gripping the country. The Southeast Asian nation grants an annual amnesty to thousands of prisoners to mark its April New Year holiday, but this is the largest recorded in recent years. It comes as governments around the world — including the US, […]
TRIPOLI, Libya (AFP) — Libya’s justice ministry announced Sunday over 450 prisoners were being freed in a bid to protect against the spread of coronavirus in the wake of the war-torn country’s first declared infections. Judicial officials decided to “free 466 detainees from correctional facilities” in Tripoli, according to a statement by the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord’s justice ministry. The detainees were in pretrial detention or had qualified for conditional release, the statement added. […]
MALABO, Equatorial Guinea (AFP) — Equatorial Guinean President Teodoro Obiang Nguema on Wednesday announced a “total amnesty” for all political prisoners and opposition figures banned from political activity, according to a decree read on national television. “I grant total amnesty to all citizens condemned by the courts… for political offenses in the exercise of their activity, serving or not serving their sentence,” the presidential decree said. The move comes after President Obiang, who has ruled the […]
PARIS, France (AFP) – The French government pointed to possible security failings on Monday after a notorious gangster used a helicopter to stage his second brazen jailbreak of a crime career inspired by films such as “Scarface”. The latest escape of Redoine Faid, who was serving a 25-year sentence for an armed robbery in which a policewoman was killed, has left French authorities red-faced. Faid was sprung from a prison in Paris by two accomplices […]
UNITED NATIONS, United States (AFP) — The United States, France, Britain and 35 other countries asked UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday to raise the case of jailed film director Oleg Sentsov and dozens of other Ukrainian prisoners during his talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin next week. The UN chief will hold talks with Putin on Wednesday and attend a Portugal-Morocco match during the World Cup that Russia is hosting. The 38 countries wrote […]
by Andrew Beatty © Agence France-Presse WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — US President Donald Trump will greet three Americans released by North Korea at an airbase near Washington Thursday, underscoring a much needed diplomatic win and a stepping stone to a historic summit with Kim Jong Un. Trump will make the short helicopter ride from the White House to Joint Base Andrews to meet Kim Hak-song, Tony Kim and Kim Dong-chul in person, after their […]
YANGON, Myanmar (AFP) — Myanmar’s president on Tuesday announced pardons for more than 8,500 prisoners, including three dozen jailed in political cases, as part of an annual amnesty marking the country’s traditional new year. President Win Myint, who took office last month after his predecessor suddenly resigned, said the pardons would be granted on humanitarian grounds during the Buddhist new year festival known as Thingyan. The amnesty was extended mostly to drug offenders, as […]
ABUJA, Nigeria (AFP) — Nigeria has freed another 51 Boko Haram suspects in the latest round of dropped cases for lack of evidence, the justice ministry said Monday. Over the course of last week, hundreds of suspected Boko Haram extremists appeared before a court at the Kainji military base in central Niger state. A total of 526 suspects have been released from custody after it was found there was not enough evidence to prosecute them, underscoring concerns […]
by Ammar Karim Agence France-Presse BAGHDAD, Iraq (AFP) — Their names spread terror across the Islamic State group’s cross-border “caliphate,” but senior jihadists now languish in Iraqi prisons, subjects of mockery for the populace they ruled. Once boasting nicknames like the Black Box and the Butcher of Mosul, the defeated IS commanders now draw vitriol on social media while news outlets have published selfies taken by Iraqi soldiers of them being captured or marched handcuffed […]
by Sophie MIGNON Agence France-Presse BREDA, Netherlands (AFP) – Voices echo around the magnificent, luminous dome of Breda prison, breaking the silence of the 130-year-old building, now empty of inmates like dozens of others in The Netherlands. Falling crime rates over the last decade, as well as changing ideas about punishing criminals have robbed this penitentiary of its original purpose, and its gates clanged shut in 2014. Built in 1886, it was possible […]
MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo R. Duterte said he will not release political prisoners without a signed bilateral ceasefire agreement with the National Democratic Front (NDF). Labor Secretary Sivestre Bello III in a statement said the President told him that if he’ll be given signed bilateral ceasefire agreement, he will release the political prisoners within 48 hours. “The President told us that once he receives even just a facsimile copy of the signed agreement, he […]
