Concern over prison overcrowding

Swaziland's prisons are becoming dangerously overcrowded as one consequence of a controversial Non-Bailable Offences Act, legal observers say. "We predicted a crisis in prisons, and we were right. Not only does the non-bailable law tie the hands of magistrates by denying them the discretionary power to set bail, but it has led to inhuman conditions of crowding at the prisons," a source at the Swaziland Law Society told IRIN. "Prisons are overcrowded, but the situation is particularly bad at remand centres," reported the Bureau of Democracy this week. Amnesty International has also criticised the five-year-old non-bailable law. A paralysis in the court system brought on by a current "rule of law" crisis has seen the postponement of many criminal cases, further worsening overcrowding and the attendant health risks as defendants remain incarcerated while they await postponed trials. At an extraordinary weekend meeting the Swaziland Law Society resolved not to attend cases before new government-appointed judges, to protest the removal or demotion of Chief Justice Stanley Sapire, Justice Thomas Masuku and others. The demoted judges had angered palace officials with rulings deemed counter to palace interests. "Some inmates have been remanded back to our facilities a dozen times. We are now dangerously overcrowded," Chief of the Correctional Service, Commissioner Mnguni Simelane, told parliament. Attorney Paul Shilubane, president of the Law Society, told IRIN: "We have been advocating for an end to the Non-Bailable Offences Act. It is a violation of human rights. It turns the principals of justice on their head by assuming certain criminal suspects are guilty until proven innocent." If a person is arrested for rape, murder, armed robbery or other serious crimes, he or she cannot be granted bail by courts. After hearings to set trial dates, judges are instructed by law to send these suspects back to the remand centre in the central commercial hub, Manzini. The law went into effect in 1998 in response to a crime wave that startled the conservative Swazi nation and undermined the country's image as a tranquil home of African traditional life. A 2001 royal decree attempted to expand the list of non-bailable crimes to include people charged with vaguely defined anti-state activities. But under international pressure King Mswati III rescinded the decree.