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Mahara prison riots: Final report recommends criminal charges against prison officers and inmates over possible involvement
Prison officials responsible for shooting to death inmates of Mahara prison may face charges, if they had used ‘excessive force,’ the Sunday Times learns.
This follows a final report of the Committee of Inquiry that probed the Mahara prisons catastrophe on November 29.
The Committee was headed by retired High Court Judge Kusala Sarojini Weerawardena. Its other members were Justice Ministry Advisor U.R. De Silva, PC, Justice Ministry Additional Secretary Rohana Hapugaswatta, retired Senior Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) D.R.L. Ranaweera and retired Commissioner General of Prisons Gamini Jayasinghe.
The five member committee has also recommended that charges be brought against any prisoners found to have been involved in the destruction of prison property, arson and causing injuries to others. The committee has further recommended that the Attorney General be tasked with initiating legal action once the Criminal Investigation Department’s (CID) probe into the incident is concluded.
It has pointed out that a police investigation is necessary to determine if prison officers performed their duties properly during the incident or if they had used excessive force.
The unrest left 11 inmates dead and 120 inmates and two prison officers injured.
The Committee’s final report, which runs into 61 pages, has submitted its recommendations under three sections. The report contains eight recommendations aimed at reducing overcrowding among remand prisoners, seven recommendations on improving the welfare and facilities given to prisoners and 14 recommendations on how to manage prison administration more efficiently.
The final report includes 31 documents and evidence given by 40 witnesses. The Committee had invited witnesses to voluntarily testify before it and accordingly, suspects in remand custody, inmates serving sentences and prison officers have all given evidence before it.
It has been found that frustration over lack of basic facilities for prisoners, coupled with the rapid spread of COVID-19 among the prison population, had led to the unrest. Some prison inmates however, had also acted with deliberate intent to escalate the incident into violence, the Committee has also found.
The number of inmates at the Mahara prison at the time of the incident stood at 2793 – three times its capacity. A total of 2152 of these were suspects who were in remand custody for narcotics related offences. Even at full capacity, 502 prison officers should be on duty to manage the prison population. At the time of the incident however, when the prison was bursting with more than triple its capacity, just 278 officers were assigned to Mahara prison, owing to long-standing staff shortages. Even this was not a true reflection of the officer strength at the prison since some officers themselves were in hospital after contracting COVID-19.
The report has noted that the prison administration had failed to fill existing vacancies among officers in a way that enabled functions at the prison to be conducted satisfactorily.
The quality of food served to inmates had also deteriorated and there were food shortages among the prisoners given that not enough officers were present to oversee the cooking and distribution of food. Given this situation, the stronger prisoners had taken much of the food and left weaker prisoners with very little, sometimes with just the left-over gravy from curries. Some prisoners, who had formed themselves into gangs, had also taken over certain parts of the prison prior to the incident on November 29, with outnumbered prison officers forced to leave those sections in the hands of inmates, the Committee has also found.
Moreover, prisoners were frustrated over issues related to the pandemic. They had repeatedly requested PCR tests but the testing process had been slow. Meanwhile, restrictions placed on bringing food from outside and the halting of all visits for prisoners caused severe psychological stress among them.
Another factor that contributed to the unrest was that prison authorities had kept suspects who had been granted bail by courts for a further two weeks in prison as a form of quarantine, citing advice from health authorities that prisoners should not be released immediately for fear they may have contracted COVID-19. The Committee has noted that this action of forcibly keeping suspects in prison even after they had been released by courts amounts to a violation of their human rights.
In addition to recommending criminal charges against prison officers and inmates over their possible involvement in the incident, the Committee has also recommended that the Government provide compensation for the 11 inmates who were killed.
Meanwhile, Justice Minister Ali Sabry told the Sunday Times that he will submit the final report of the Committee appointed to probe the Mahara prison incident to Cabinet on Monday (4).
He added that the President and the Cabinet would take necessary steps and decisions based on the recommendations made by the Committee.
Already, Wattala Magistrate Buddhika Sri Ragala has ruled that eight of the inmates who were killed had died as a result of shooting.
PCR tests conducted on the deceased had revealed that eight of the 11 inmates who died had contracted COVID-19. The bodies of four inmates were cremated earlier while the court also ordered the cremation of the other four bodies this week after the Attorney General and the Government Analyst told the court that all the bullets had been collected from the bodies.
When the case was taken up at the Wattala Magistrate’s Court on December 30, Attorney-at-Law Senaka Perera, who appeared for the aggrieved party, told court that many parties had claimed that the incident at Mahara prison was a “conspiracy.” He mentioned the names of Government Ministers Wimal Weerawansa and Jayantha Samaraweera who had made such allegations and requested the magistrate to order that their statements be recorded. The magistrate ordered police to investigate this as well.
The case of the three other inmates who were killed is to be heard on January 8