Crumbled system leaves suspects languishing in jails without trial

During the final months of the civil war, when rebel fighters bombarded the capital Monrovia, Liberia’s central prison took mortar hits and prisoners scrambled over the rubble to freedom. Over two years since the end of fighting, the country’s only maximum security prison is filling up once again but the jailhouses have not been repaired or rebuilt and the legal structures for handling prisoners’ cases are far from fully operational. As a result, 300 suspected murderers and rapists are crammed into cells with no electricity, running water or toilet facilities in a building designed to hold no more than 180 inmates. Darus Saplah, detained for two years on murder charges, is one of 16 inmates in a cell designed for three people at most. “I have not appeared in court for any trial since I was arrested in Maryland County [eastern Liberia] and brought here for detention. This is a violation of my rights,” 32-year-old Saplah said. Findings of by the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) support Saplah’s complaint. UNMIL’s January monthly report deplored conditions at the prison which “failed to meet basic minimum standards for treatments of detainees as outlined in national and international laws.” Battered Liberia emerged from 14 years of brutal civil war in 2003 to begin a mammoth reconstruction programme under UN supervision. Two years on, Monrovia is still without electricity and running water and blackened buildings in the seafront capital bear the scars of mortar shelling, bullets and years of neglect. Africa’s first female president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf took office in Liberia in mid-January and has promised to head a government of action but many of her cabinet nominees, including would-be Justice Minister Frances Johnson-Morris, have yet to be confirmed by the senate. Even once approved, it could be months before Johnson-Morris would take the helm at the Ministry of Justice – a shaky system at best, the rebuilding of which “represents the single greatest challenge to lasting peace [in Liberia],” the UNMIL report says. Fundamental problems include a lack of trained lawyers and prosecutors, UNMIL says. “As a result, there is frequently a failure to uphold due process rights… these include the right to be tried within a reasonable period of time, time limits on pre-trial detention, the right to be tried by a competent court and the right of legal representation and redress.” Over the decade and a half of fighting, most educated Liberians fled the country. The head of Monrovia prison, Colonel James Dickerson, agreed that these days the government does not have the capacity to process criminal cases. “Government sometimes does not follow up cases on those detainees…there have been problems of evidence gathering to carry out the prosecution proceedings,” he told IRIN. He acknowledged that prisoners’ human rights were being violated at the prison, not least because many had been held without trial for more than the legal 90 days, but he said there was little he could do until the government speeds up prosecution proceedings. Liberia’s chief prosecutor Theophillus Gould told IRIN that the government was working to clear the backlog. “This process has just started and it will take some time. The rights of those detainees are a paramount concern for the government right now.” But the officials’ words are of little comfort to inmates of the hot and crowded cells that reek of urine and faeces. Ralph Flanjay, who is 29 and said he was a spokesman for more than 100 of the prisoners, had tears rolling down his cheeks as he contemplated his position. “We are in a serious dilemma here, as we do not know when our fates will be decided by the government… some of us here have spent months and years in prison without the government going through our cases,” Flangay said. “It has become evident that the government has forgotten about us completely.”