State to act on rights abuse complaint

Attorney-General Amin Saad said on Friday on radio that he would take action against the police chief of Bafata for the treatment meted out to prisoners of war in the town, located around 80 km east of Bissau, a humanitarian source told IRIN. His statement came on the heels of a complaint by the Guinea-Bissau Human Rights League, which said on Wednesday that the prisoners had been paraded in Bafata’s streets “barefoot and with their hands tied behind their backs”. Such “barbarous” treatment is an open violation of the Guinea-Bissau constitution,” Lusa quoted the League as saying. Most of the 385 prisoners of war in Guinea Bissau are soldiers who backed Nino Vieira, the former president ousted in May. Eighty-eight of them were scheduled to be released on Friday, the humanitarian source said. The source told IRIN that the incident in Bafata reportedly involved three prisoners, although a radio report spoke of seven. The men were being kept in Bissau because there are no detention facilities in Bafata, where they allegedly committed their crimes. They had been taken to the town to demonstrate to the civilian population that there was no impunity. “This is not a systematic practice,” the source said.