[Previous entry: "UN inquiry demands immediate closure of Guantanamo"] [Next entry: "Tariq Ali:"]

02/14/2006:

"Report attacks France's human rights record"

...Mr Gil-Robles said he was "shocked by the lamentable state" of certain police cells where "detainees even sleep on the floor and are not given any mattress or bed linen". He said it was a "sad fact" that chronic overcrowding and a lack of money in French prisons "deprived a large number of detainees from exercising their basic rights" and made their incarceration a "double punishment".

...Le Parisien said the council's report also criticised the fact that prisoners who misbehaved could be placed in punishment cells for up to 45 days.

...Mr Gil-Robles told France-Info radio: "For me the most important thing is that the prison route is not a route of vengeance but a route to obtain justice - to give criminals a punishment and afterwards allow them to be reintegrated into society ... In France that is not possible."

Mr Gil-Robles had harsh words for France's immigration policy and the announcement last year by the French interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, of a 50% rise in expulsions of illegal immigrants.

"The very fact of announcing quotas is a shocking practice," Mr Gil-Robles said.
guardian.co.uk