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| Sunday, 18 January 2004 |
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Hearings at prison: 25 prisoners identified as vulnerable by Don Asoka Wijewardena The Prisons Department, which last week initiated moves to conduct magisterial hearings within prison premises for hard-core criminals, has identified around 25 prisoners as being vulnerable to being 'bumped off' by rival groups or criminal bigwigs. The moves to hold hearings in prison follows the 'Chicago-style' murder of Dhammika Amarasinghe, last week when he was appearing in court, and is expected to safeguard other criminals from suffering similar fate, jeopardising judicial proceedings. Commissioner General of Prisons, Rumy Marzook, who initiated the new procedure in concurrence with the judiciary,said the rationale behind the move was to protect vulnerable hard-core criminals and to avert any possible attacks by rival groups. Police intelligence reveals by rival parties are likely to do the same when high profile prisoners are taken outside the prison, especially going out for trials. Commissioner Marzook said that there were about 20 to 25 high profile prisoners at Welikada whose lives were in danger and confirmed that he had received reliable information about rival groups planning to ambush them. Welikada prison houses 4,100 men prisoners, Colombo Remand Prison 1,300 and New Magazine Prison 1,300. There are also 400 women prisoners housed at Welikada. There are also about 80 army deserters at Welikada prison. In accordance with the law, judges are required to extend the prison terms for high profile prisoners every 14 days. The Commissioner General also pointed out that because of the rising criminal activities, especially among underworld groups, he had asked the Police department to train all prison guards on the usage of sophisticated weaponery, a safe escort of prisoners,special training on ambush counter-attacks and bomb blast disposal and to intensify the existing security measures inside the prison premises. He also said that on the instruction of Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Sirisena Herath, an extensive program to train prison guards had been implemented and added that every prison guard was required to undergo the training program at least for two months. Marzook also said that in accordance with the Prison Ordinance, he had to transfer a number of hard-core criminals to other prisons for their safety as many rival groups had engineered a series of clashes inside the prison. |
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