AMMAN, 30 August 2007 — Jordan has fired a prison warden after inmates at his desert jail caused disturbances during a visit by a rights group to probe torture allegations, officials said yesterday.
Majed Rawashdeh was replaced at the Suwaqa Prison by Col. Abed Okaili following Sunday’s incidents, police spokesman Maj. Bashir Daajeh said in a statement published in local newspapers. He was sacked “because he committed serious administrative mistakes,” during a visit by Human Rights Watch on Sunday to the prison, a security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
During the HRW visit, around 100 prisoners cut themselves with ceramic tiles they broke from prison toilets, action that police said was designed to attract the attention of the rights team. HRW representative Christoph Wilcke was quoted by the local press as saying his team saw dozens of prisoners covered in blood and others injuring themselves during the visit.
Human Rights Watch this month announced plans to make unprecedented visits to Jordan’s secretive detention facilities to check on the condition of prisoners and investigate allegations of torture.
The watchdog was on a fact-finding mission to Jordanian jails, where local opposition and human rights groups claim that torture is practiced on detainees. Christopher Wilcke, head of the New York-based watchdog team that visited Suwaqa, said the dismissal was a “swift and necessary action.”
Meanwhile, the top US envoy on refugees announced Tuesday that the United States will increase its support to countries hosting Iraqi refugees with a $30 million grant for education. US Assistant Secretary of State Ellen Sauerbrey said the pledge of support will help educate Iraqi schoolchildren and assist countries like Jordan, where tens of thousands of Iraqi refugee children recently began attending government schools.
Jordan and Syria host the largest percentage of the more than 2 million displaced Iraqis and complain of the increasing burdens on their health and education infrastructures.
