EUROPE’S CPT ABOUT IMRALI CONDITIONS

According to the report, as in 2010, the CPT’s delegation received no allegations and found no other evidence of ill-treatment of prisoners by prison staff at Imralı Prison. On the contrary, inmates generally spoke favourably about the manner in which they were treated by the management of the prison and prison officers.

CPT publishes report on its visit to Imralı Prison

ANF – STRASBOURG 13.03.2014 – The Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) has released the report it drew up after a delegation of the CPT visited Imralı F-Type High-Security Closed Prison  from 16 to 17 January 2013. The report was adopted by the CPT at its 80th meeting, held from 4 to 8 March 2013.

CPT said the main purpose of the visit in January 2013 was to review on the spot the measures taken by the Turkish authorities to implement the recommendations made by the Committee in the report on the January 2010 visit to Imralı Prison. CPT also remarked that he delegation interviewed individually and in private all the six prisoners currently held at Imralı Prison and examined relevant administrative and medical files. It also had consultations with the management and staff of the prison as well as with the establishment’s medical co-ordinator and the doctor on duty at the time of the visit.

The report said that on 12 February 2013, the President of the CPT met, on behalf of the delegation, the Minister of Justice, Sadullah ERGIN, and the Director General for Prisons and Detention Houses, Mustafa ONUK, as well as other senior officials from the Ministries of Justice and Foreign Affairs, and presented to them the delegation’s preliminary observations.

According to the report, as in 2010, the CPT’s delegation received no allegations and found no other evidence of ill-treatment of prisoners by prison staff at Imralı Prison. On the contrary, inmates generally spoke favourably about the manner in which they were treated by the management of the prison and prison officers.

The CPT noted that Abdullah Öcalan has recently been provided with a television set, thereby aligning his situation in this regard with that of the other inmates of Imralı Prison. The Committee is pleased that the recommendation repeatedly made on this subject following previous visits has finally been implemented.

As regards the regime, the CPT welcomed the fact that the amount of time prisoners could spend in the open air was in principle doubled after the January 2010 visit from two to four hours (two times two hours) per day, including at weekends. And at the time of the January 2013 visit, all the prisoners were benefiting from four hours of outdoor exercise, with the notable exception of Abdullah Öcalan.

“In their letter of 24 February 2010, the Turkish authorities stated that “[o]pen air time is now extended to four hours per day by the decision of the Board of Administration and Observation as of 4 February 2010. Please take note that convict Öcalan is currently excluded from this practice because of the two solitary confinement punishments he has received, which are yet to be implemented. However, convict Öcalan will also be able to benefit from prolonged open air time once the Board of Administration and Observation is convinced of his good conduct in the future,” CPT stated.

During the 2013 visit, the delegation was informed that the implementation of the last disciplinary sanction regarding Abdullah Öcalan had ended on 19 December 2011 and that Abdullah Öcalan had automatically acquired the formal status of “good behaviour” twelve months later, since no further disciplinary proceedings had been initiated in the meantime. Notwithstanding this, it remained the case that Abdullah Öcalan was only allowed to benefit from two hours (two times one hour) of outdoor exercise per day.

According to the CPT report, the Turkish authorities have failed to implement the specific recommendations made by the Committee after the 2010 visit with regard to prisoners’ outdoor exercise. Firstly, it remained the case that prisoners were obliged to take outdoor exercise alone in the yard adjacent to their cell, and, secondly, the yards attached to the individual cells were far too small (with a surface of 24 m² surrounded by six-metre-high walls) to allow prisoners to exert themselves physically.

“To sum up, out of a total of 168 hours per week, prisoners could stay outside their cells for up to 36 hours (22 hours for Abdullah Öcalan), but they were able to be in contact with other inmates for only eight hours per week; in other words, they were being held in solitary confinement for 160 hours per week”, the report said.

In this regard, the CPT noted that a paradoxical situation which already existed at the time of the last visit had become permanent.

Referring to the positive impact the transfer of five other prisoners to the island in 2009 had  on the situation of Abdullah Öcalan, the CPT added that “before their transfer to Imralı, the prisoners concerned had usually been able to be together with two other prisoners from neighbouring cells in a common exercise yard for several hours per day. However, at Imralı Prison, they were prevented from having any such contacts while in the exercise yard, and, as indicated above, they were also locked up alone in their cells for most of the time.”

The CPT also recommended that Abdullah Öcalan be allowed to have contact with other prisoners during his outdoor exercise; as was indicated in the report on the 2010 visit, there can be no justification for denying such contact.

CPT remarked that the Committee would like to receive, on a monthly basis for the next three months, a detailed account of all out-of-cell activities offered to prisoners at Imralı Prison and of all activities which have actually taken place (including an indication of the number of prisoners involved).

More generally, the CPT stressed once again that the regime applied to prisoners serving a sentence of aggravated life imprisonment suffers from a fundamental flaw and should be revised not only at Imralı Prison but in the prison system as a whole.

The CPT also drew the Turkish authorities’ attention to Section 7 of Recommendation Rec (2003) 23 on the Management by Prison Administrations of Life-Sentenced and Other Long-Term Prisoners (adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on 9 October 2003), which emphasises that life-sentenced prisoners should not be segregated from other prisoners on the sole ground of their sentence.

The Committee reiterated its recommendation that the Turkish authorities reconsider their policy vis-à-vis prisoners sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment, in the light of the above remarks, and amend the relevant legislation accordingly.

Stressing that ensuring that prisoners have adequate means of contact with the outside world is a key element of their overall protection against ill-treatment, the CPT said in this regard, it is a matter of grave concern that Abdullah Öcalan has not been able to receive visits from his lawyers since 27 July 2011.

CPT noted that the five other prisoners held at Imralı Prison had continuously refused to meet their lawyers since April 2011, allegedly in order to protest against the decision taken by the prison administration at that time to monitor and record their conversations with lawyers.

The report noted that at the meeting with the Minister of Justice on 12 February 2013, the President of the CPT reiterated the Committee’s position that, whenever, in exceptional cases, access to a specific lawyer is denied on the grounds that he/she is allegedly being used as a means of transmitting instructions linked to terrorist or other criminal activities, access to another independent lawyer must be guaranteed. During the ensuing discussion, -the report said- the Minister of Justice affirmed that the Turkish Government was actively working on a solution to the problem of access to a lawyer.

With reference to Articles 3 and 10, paragraph 2, of the Convention, the CPT called upon the Turkish authorities to take the necessary steps – without any further delay – to ensure that all prisoners at Imralı Prison are able, if they so wish, to receive visits from a lawyer.

The CPT was pleased to note that the health-care services at Imralı Prison have been significantly improved in the light of the recommendations and comments made by the Committee after the 2010 visit, adding that a senior public health doctor has been appointed as medical co-ordinator of the prison and is is present on the island on a regular basis (on average, once every three weeks) and co-ordinates the work of the doctors who are deployed to the island.

The CPT reiterated its recommendation that the Ministry of Justice take immediate steps – in co-operation with the Ministry of Health – to ensure that the principle of medical confidentiality is fully respected at Imralı Prison.

The report noted that in recent years, twelve disciplinary sanctions in the form of solitary confinement for 20 days had been imposed on Abdullah Öcalan for not having respected the existing rules when receiving visits; however, for a long time, the implementation of these sanctions had been temporarily suspended.

“The delegation was informed that, in the course of 2011, all the above-mentioned sanctions were implemented at once, the consequence being that Abdullah Öcalan was continuously held in cellular confinement for a total of 240 days. Such a state of affairs is totally unacceptable. In the CPT’s opinion, there should have been an interruption of several days in the solitary confinement regime after each sanction had been served”, the report stressed. The CPT recommended that the Turkish authorities take the necessary measures to ensure that there is no repetition at Imralı Prison of such a prolonged period of solitary confinement of a prisoner.  The report added that it is regrettable that visits by the prison monitoring board to Imralı Prison are not carried out more frequently, as required by law. The CPT recalled that, pursuant to Section 7 of the Act on Prison Monitoring Boards of 14 June 2001, every prison shall be visited by the competent prison monitoring board at least once every two months.