Solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment in which an incarcerated person lives in a single cell with little or no contact with other people. It is a punitive tool used within the prison system to discipline or separate incarcerated individuals who are considered to be security risks to other incarcerated individuals or prison staff, as well as those who violate facility rules or are deemed disruptive. However, it can also be used as protective custody for incarcerated individuals whose safety is threatened by other prisoners. This is employed to separate them from the general prison population and prevent injury or death.
This article describes the use of torture since the adoption of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which prohibited it. Torture is prohibited by international law and is illegal in most countries. However, it is still used by many governments.
Camp Delta is a permanent American detainment camp at Guantanamo Bay that replaced the temporary facilities of Camp X-Ray. Its first facilities were built between 27 February and mid-April 2002 by Navy Seabees, Marine Engineers, and workers from Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root. It is composed of detention camps 1 through 6, Camp Platinum, Camp Iguana, the Guantanamo psychiatric ward, Camp Echo and Camp No. The prisoners, referred to as detainees, have uncertain rights due to their location not on American soil. There are allegations of torture and abuse of prisoners.
Prisoner abuse is the mistreatment of persons while they are under arrest or incarcerated. Prisoner abuse can include physical abuse, psychological abuse, sexual abuse, torture, or other acts such as refusal of essential medication, and it can be perpetuated by either fellow inmates or prison faculty.
Penal labour is a term for various kinds of forced labour that prisoners are required to perform, typically manual labour. The work may be light or hard, depending on the context. Forms of sentence involving penal labour have included involuntary servitude, penal servitude, and imprisonment with hard labour. The term may refer to several related scenarios: labour as a form of punishment, the prison system used as a means to secure labour, and labour as providing occupation for convicts. These scenarios can be applied to those imprisoned for political, religious, war, or other reasons as well as to criminal convicts.
Sami Mohy El Din Muhammed Al Hajj, aka Sami Al-Haj is a Sudanese journalist for the Al Jazeera network. In 2001, while on his way to do camera work for the network in Afghanistan, he was arrested by the Pakistani army and held in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camp in Cuba for over six years. After his release, al-Hajj wrote a book titled Prisoner 345. He was released without charge on May 1, 2008. He later attempted to launch legal action against George W. Bush.
Black sites are clandestine detention centers operated by a state where prisoners who have not been charged with a crime are incarcerated without due process or court order, are often mistreated and murdered, and have no recourse to bail.
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp, also known as GTMO, GITMO, or just Guantanamo Bay, is a United States military prison within Naval Station Guantanamo Bay (NSGB), on the coast of Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It was established in January 2002 by U.S. President George W. Bush to hold terrorism suspects and "illegal enemy combatants" during the Global War on Terrorism following the attacks of September 11, 2001. As of August 2024, at least 780 persons from 48 countries have been detained at the camp since its creation, of whom 740 had been transferred elsewhere, 9 died in custody, and 30 remain; only 16 detainees have ever been charged by the U.S. with criminal offenses.
Muhammad Ali Abdallah Muhammad Bwazir is a citizen of Yemen, once held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba. Bwazir's Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 440. American intelligence analysts estimate he was born in 1980, in Hawra', Yemen.
Administrative detention is arrest and detention of individuals by the state without trial. A number of jurisdictions claim that it is done for security reasons. Many countries claim to use administrative detention as a means to combat terrorism or rebellion, to control illegal immigration, or to otherwise protect the ruling regime.
Camp 1391, also referred to as Unit 1391 or Facility 1391, is an Israel Defense Forces prison camp in northern Israel for "high-risk" prisoners. It is run by Unit 504. The existence of the prison was unknown to the public before 2003, and most information about it remains classified, although the Supreme Court of Israel ordered the release of some information about the jail.
There are cases, both documented and alleged, that involve the usage of torture by members of the United States government, military, law enforcement agencies, intelligence agencies, health care services, and other public organizations both in and out of the country.
In United States law, habeas corpus is a recourse challenging the reasons or conditions of a person's detention under color of law. The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. A persistent standard of indefinite detention without trial and incidents of torture led the operations of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp to be challenged internationally as an affront to international human rights, and challenged domestically as a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution, including the right of petition for habeas corpus. On 19 February 2002, Guantanamo detainees petitioned in federal court for a writ of habeas corpus to review the legality of their detention.
The future of Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is considered central to progress in the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. Cases of prison sentences include the charges of terrorism or being a member of an "illegal terrorist organization", such as Hamas or prior to the Oslo Accords the Palestine Liberation Organization, but according to some accounts also by political activism such as raising a Palestinian flag.
Indefinite detention is the incarceration of an arrested person by a national government or law enforcement agency for an indefinite amount of time without a trial. The Human Rights Watch considers this practice as violating national and international laws, particularly human rights laws, although it remains in legislation in various liberal democracies.
The Guantanamo Bay Hunger Strikes were a series of prisoner protests at the U.S. detention camp Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The first hunger strikes began in 2002 when the camp first opened, but the secrecy of the camp's operations prevented news of those strikes from reaching the public. The first widely reported hunger strikes occurred in 2005.
Kouhyar Goudarzi is an Iranian human rights activist, journalist and blogger who was imprisoned several times by the government of Iran. He previously served as an editor of Radio Zamane. He is a member of Committee of Human Rights Reporters (CHRR), serving as the head from 2005-2009.
Prisoners' rights in international law are found in a number of international treaties. For the most part these treaties came into existence following the two World Wars and the body of law continues to be added to and amended.
A prison is a place where people condemned to a custodial sentence or awaiting their trial are held against their will. Prisons are also used to try to reintegrate inmates into society in order to prevent recidivism. French prisons are overflowing and the penitentiary personnel is understaffed. In 2003 the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), an organ of the European Council reported "inhumane and degrading treatment" in French prisons.
On July 26, 2010, seventeen prisoners from Ward 350 of Evin prison, Iran, executed a 16-day hunger strike to protest solitary confinement, as well as the poor living conditions within the prison. This included the lack of necessary medical treatment, arbitrary detention, denial of access to legal counsel, suspension of visitation privileges and abuse from prison guards. Subsequent to the hunger strike, authorities placed the seventeen prisoners in solitary confinement in Ward 240, while also prohibiting them from making phone calls, visiting their families, or contacting their lawyers. Overall, the action did not achieve its objectives of improving conditions within the prison or gaining access to legal counsel. However, one of the prisoners on strike, Babak Bordbar, was released for unknown reasons on August 10.
