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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Jordanians put down prison riot |
| 2006-04-14 |
| Jordanian security forces stormed a high security prison outside Amman on Thursday, quashing a daylong uprising by Islamist prisoners and leaving one inmate dead and more than 35 guards and inmates wounded, government officials said. It was the second such riot in Jordan in less than two months, adding to rising concerns that the growing Islamist population within prisons is organizing and giving Al Qaeda a new avenue for control. Rioting broke out early on Thursday morning at the Qafqafa prison, about an hour north of Amman, the capital. The incident started when Islamist prisoners, including suspected members of Al Qaeda, refused officers' attempts to inspect their cellblock. One prisoner, who reportedly contacted the Arab news channel Al Jazeera on a contraband cellphone, said that prisoners had taken two guards hostage and that security forces had used bullets and tear gas to quell the riot. The government did not immediately confirm the claims. Interior Minister Eid Fayez said the inspections were part of a nationwide effort to crack down on contraband in the country's prisons. In March, prisoners at the Juweideh prison, on the outskirts of Amman, took a prison official hostage and wounded several police officers in a 14-hour standoff that erupted when officials sought to transfer two members of Al Qaeda, prisoners who were scheduled for execution. During that uprising, inmates at Swaqa prison, about 60 miles south of Amman, and at Qafqafa prison also rose in solidarity, pointing to cooperation between groups in different prisons. Signs of a prisoner movement have been apparent in other countries. In Yemen in February, 23 prisoners linked to Al Qaeda broke out of a prison by digging a tunnel under it. Yemeni security officials believe that the men were able to win the sympathies of low-level prison guards and officials who allowed them to continue digging. "Things no longer end in prison anymore. In fact, increasingly they begin there," said Hassan Abu Hanieh, who studies militant movements in Amman. Arab prisons have become recruitment centers, Mr. Hanieh and other analysts say, where Al Qaeda is building its ranks. As governments in the region have cracked down on Islamists, the militants have flooded into prisons and become a much more powerful part of the population there. Wardens have had more difficulty keeping them separated from other prisoners, raising pressure on officials to give in to the Islamists' demands to keep the peace. The prisoners who rioted Thursday had been allowed to cook their own meals and received money from their families, said Shaher Bak, commissioner of the National Center for Human Rights. "They control the world inside the prisons," Mr. Hanieh said of the Islamists. Almost every prison in Jordan is now controlled by an informal emir among the Islamist prisoners, who can decide much of the future of inmates, oversees prayers and searches for recruits, he said. "What really helps them is that the society inside has borne a sense of oppression and now view the government as the enemy," he added. The changing prison population has left officials with a dilemma, said Faris Breizat, an analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies at Jordan University. "The authorities have a problem: if they want to put them in solitary confinement, there's not enough space; if they combine them with other prisoners they will recruit; but if they leave them together, they will only solidify their networks," Mr. Breizat said. "In many ways, their hands are tied." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #4 Jordan will have a limited tolerance of this sh*t. Next uprising, expect excessive casualties. |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-04-14 20:11 |
| #3 Whenever I hear the term "prison riot" I always wonder why it isn't followed by "inmates massacred by guards." If you're in prison, by definition you're a POS who has seriously broken society's rules and is being allowed to pay the price to eventually come back into society. If you screw up while in the pen, like by rioting, for example, you've demonstrated that the decision to let you pay that price was a wrong one. Society should simply then remove you from the land of the living and stop paying for your maintenance. |
| Posted by: mac 2006-04-14 20:04 |
| #2 The United States was able to build the first nuclear device in 3 years from a standing start. What is amazing is that with the amount of information freely available, funding from an economy as large as the U. S. in WWII and the knowledge the Iranians have gained from overseas study as well as A. Q. Khan they have been unable to develop a bomb in at least 6. |
| Posted by: Whiper Gleremble8054 2006-04-14 09:38 |
| #1 What, they can't build more prisons? They're cheaper than the alternative of getting your cities blown up. |
| Posted by: gromky 2006-04-14 09:20 |