An 18-year-old prisoner recounts his departure from Roubaix, his life in a country at war, and his detention with no way out.
Tag: prison
CAIRO — “Take care and hopefully see you soon. :)” I end the short letter to my family with a few requests for items to bring on their next visit, then hand it to one of my cellmates to give to his wife, who will pass it on to my mother the day after her […]
Pigeonly is one of several applications that were designed by ex-cons and are transforming the way U.S. prisoners communicate with the outside world.
Family and friends waited for incarcerated Egyptian blogger Shady Abu Zeid to be able to arrive at his father’s funeral.
CAIRO — “Wednesday isn’t blue?” Ayman looked at me like I’d gone mad. “Ok, what about your name. Isn’t it sort of reddish?” “Have you lost it?” he replied with a snort, sure I was joking. I enthusiastically started to explain the phenomenon which I’d just been reading about in a book exploring the secrets […]
Abdelrahman al-Gendy, a standout student and Harry Potter aficionado, was just 17 when he was arrested in Cairo, charged with multiple crimes, and given a 15-year prison sentence.
Brazil’s imprisoned former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, writes an impassioned plea published by Le Monde, alongside a call by European leaders to Brazilian authorities to let Lula run for president in October.
Having spent 22 years in Israeli jails, Sinwar knows his adversary — and appears open to negotiate, with both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Among the world’s many gloomy corners, it is hard to get any gloomier than Brazil. After a drug war broke out among several criminal groups, leading to huge prison riots and the death of close to 100 inmates, what looks like a worrying yellow fever outbreak and the death of the Supreme Court judge leading […]
Women held in Syria’s government prisons report psychological abuse, sexual assault and torture. But for many, the suffering they experience after their release is even worse.
All signs say the 56 prisoners killed inside the Anisio Jobim Prison Complex are part of an ongoing drug gang feud on the outside.
BREMEN — Murat Kurnaz, a German native of Turkish origin, likes to joke around. And considering his story, the humor can sometimes turn rather dark. Today, he speaks about the journey from the Guantanamo detention facility in Cuba to the Ramstein U.S. air base in Germany at the end of his five-year imprisonment in August […]
Imprisoned in Israel since 2002, Marwan Barghouti may be the only figure who could unite all Palestinians. Israel must decide if it’s more risky to release him or keep him in jail. Barghouti offers a rare written exchange with Le Monde.
BUENOS AIRES — Brian Molina and Maximiliano Fernández, two of Argentina’s emerging rap stars, met in jail. Molina was 11 years old when he wrote his first song. It was May 2005, and he was living at the Borchez de Otamendi home for minors in Buenos Aires. When he performed his song for friends, teachers […]
While most Western prisons operate under strict surveillance, the Filipino penitentiary system functions through an unusual combination of prisoner self-management and gang oversight.
LYON — In 2012, you could still catch sight of “yoyos” hanging from the jail cell windows. A yoyo, in French prison jargon, is a cord inmates throw through window bars to reach another cell and retrieve various objects. At the Saint-Paul and adjacent Saint-Joseph penitentiaries, in downtown Lyon, inmates could even get stuff from […]
-Essay- CAIRO — Every year, on Jan. 25, I have the same thought: I don’t have any memories to share. Every time I’m with friends who nostalgically remember moments of happiness and triumph, I stay silent, because I have no memories to share. During the 18 days of the revolution, I was in Gambia, watching […]
Islam Khalil was abducted by security forces and tortured for months. More than 200 days later, he is still behind bars pending trial for a crime without a trace. This is his story.
Mohamed Soltan lost 120 pounds during a hunger strike in Egyptian prison, where he landed for protesting against the military regime. The only American prisoner freed since the coup, he’s home now. But the physical and pychological effects of food
Inside the de-radicalization program that began last year in France to undo the indoctrination that pushed young Muslims toward extremism.
Born in Egypt and educated in journalism at university, Mohannad Ghallab became an extremist and joined al-Qaeda after 9/11. He went on to become an influential voice for the terror group before being killed by a U.S. drone strike.
A new wave of democratic protests has been spreading across Africa, from Angola to Burkina Faso and beyond, as several long-time leaders look to extend their rule for as long as they can, often defying their country’s own constitution. Front and center in these popular movements have been several prominent hip hop stars. The French-language […]
Two British reporters for VICE news, and their translator, have been charged as supporters of Kurdish group PKK, though they were first accused of being pro-ISIS.
“We were exposed to hunger, electrocution, beating and insults. We got sick, we got lice and scabies, and were often strip searched, which was the worst part.”
Sentenced to 18 years in prison, Franck fought to undergo a sex change operation with hunger strikes and endless mutilations. Chloe is now a free woman, and married to her former cellmate.
It wasn’t the Easter bunny delivering chocolate eggs this past Sunday night. No, that furry creature scaling the walls was a very real cat, in a very serious attempt to smuggle a precious load of cell phones and SIM cards into Brazil’s Romero Nobrega maximum security prison. With adhesive tape and bandages strapping the load […]
China’s ambitious judicial reform must include such basic principles as ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ and equality before the law. But it must also happen one small detail at a time.
Islamist radicals have long known that inmates offer prime soldiers to help wage their war on the outside. Now the state must react.
Tired of being denied basic rights, Egypt’s political prisoners are increasingly trying to break the cycle of helplessness with the one bit of control they still have over their lives.
Justice is twisted in a country where a man is jailed for stealing candy from a store, while gangsters and corrupt politicians are always able to negotiate prison reductions.
After the verdict sentencing Al Jazeera journalists to prison, it is difficult to consider the country’s court system independent. Dark days ahead for freedom of expression in Egypt.
Reports of the Thai army taking control in a military coup come as a growing number of activists are openly challenging the country’s long-reigning King Bhumibol.
TORA — It’s 10 a.m. and the contours of Tora Prison, south of Cairo, are filling with families arriving on time to visit relatives. Old Peugeot 504s are offloading passengers whose faces are marked by the fatigue of the trip. The scene feels like an invisible face of Cairo. Vendors selling oranges and mandarins are part of the prison economy, with families stopping and buying some on their way into the prison complex. A girl who looks about 10 years old is carrying a colossal tray of kanafeh pastries on her head. Her little brother is carrying a bag of […]
Evidence is piling up that the Damascus regime has used rape – of daughters in front of fathers, wives in front of husbands – as a targeted weapon.
One tortured by the regime, another by Islamist rebels, both offer evidence of the worst kind of brutality that reigns in Syria today.
KIEV — So Ukraine’s former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is still a prisoner — and Ukraine’s future as part of the European Union hangs in the balance. The Ukrainian Parliament balked Wednesday night on any decision to release the opposition leader, who has been jailed since 2011. Meanwhile, the EU has sent Kiev a clear […]
REUTERS, AP, BBC Worldcrunch CLEVELAND — Ariel Castro, the Cleveland man sentenced to life in prison for the kidnapping, rape and beatings of three Cleveland women he held captive in his house for nearly 10 years, was found hanged in his prison cell late Tuesday evening, Reuters reports. According to a prison official quoted by […]
RAMNICU SARAT — The door closes, hinges grating like a desperate man’s lament. Only a single sunbeam manages to make its way through the bars of the prison cell. A few minutes in this long, heavy silence and one can imagine the daily life of a prisoner, locked up inside a two-square-meter cell. In eastern […]
Two environmentalists are killed on average every week as land struggles intensify violence against green activists worldwide.