Days after Pap Saine was released from prison, he began
to fall down when walking. Although the
newspaper publisher is tall and well-built, the cause of his affliction is not
his height or weight.
“I started to feel pain in my heart and when I walk for
about five minutes, I fall down,” the 70-year-old said.
“Upon realising my condition, my doctor put me in touch with
Prof. Bah, a Senegalese heart specialist in Dakar, for a thorough heart test.”
He was eventually diagnosed with heart failure.Pap
Saine’s heart was beating at half the rate of a normal heart.He subsequently
underwent heart surgery and a pacemaker was inserted into his chest to regulate
its beat.
Pap’s heart condition started after spending 27 days in
prison. He also spent a total of 8 days
in remand.
The doctors that operated on him in the United Kingdom
said if he had spent any more days in prison or without treatment, he could
have died in his cell.
“The place was very bad, about 45 of us were in the same
cell at the Remand Wing,” he recalled of his days at Mile 2, the state central
prison of The Gambia.
Opened in 1920 by the British colonial authorities, Mile
2 is located on the highway to the Gambia’s capital, Banjul. It is about six minutes’ drive from the
capital.
The Remand Wing of Mile 2, where Pap was, is one of the
four sections of the prison. It is where
suspects undergoing trial are kept. It has 11 cells divided into two
sections, separated by 15 metres high wall.
Cells 1 to 6 are on one section, and 7 – 11 on the other. Cells 1 to 8 are of the same size, measuring
about 2.5m by 3m. The biggest cells are
9, 10 and 11. Each measures approximately 3.5m by 6m.
Pap could not remember his cell number at remand, but the total of prisoners in the cell: “45 of us were in the cell, the same cell”.
Other prisoners detained at the same time as Pap gave
similar numbers in their respective cells.
A former remand prisoner Balla Musa Saidy said that for the four years he
was in remand, the smallest number of people in his cell was 35 prisoners,
sometimes going up to 45.
Based on the testimonies of various former prisoners who
were in remand, the average number of prisoners in each cell at Remand was 30,
from 2009 to 2017.
‘Dombelow’
The conditions in which Pap left the Remand Wing about 11
years ago are still the same as observed during a conducted tour of Mile 2 in
November 2019.
The only thing that might have changed now is the number
of prisoners in the cells, particularly remand. It is now between 17 and 20
prisoners in a cell.
“The condition has improved since 2017,” a senior prison
officer in charge of the remand section said during the tour of the cells.
What serves as bed at Mile 2 remand cells is a wooden
plank placed over a raised platform about 50cm high. Each wooden plank is about
50cm wide and 1.8 metres long.
Each prisoner is given a one-man mattress of about 1inch
thick. Those that have access to the bed
spread their mattresses on the wooden plank, and the rest, on the damp floor.
With a maximum of five beds in cell of at least 17 people,
the prisoners themselves devised a means of accessing the beds.
“Access to bed in remand is by seniority in the prison –
those who came to the cell first are the ones who use the bed,” Pap explained.
Some spread their mattresses underneath the bed to have a
space to sleep. The space underneath the
wooden planks that serves as a bed is referred to by the prisoners as ‘dombelow’. It is formally referred to as ‘down below’.
The space ‘down below’,barely enough for four people
lying on their back, is shared by six prisoners. While others sleep on top and under the wooden
planks, the rest sit on the bare floor between the beds and the wall of the
cell – a space of about half a metre.
Sleeping on the ‘dombelow’ is by turn – one batch sleeps
for a certain hours and another batch comes.
The nightly struggle in remand is not just to access bedding,
but also fresh air.
The cells have two windows, about 1m by 30cm, crisscrossed
by heavy iron bars. It has one wall
fan. And with the ongoing reforms at
Mile 2, an opening of about 30cm square,for air passage, is created on some of the
iron doors. The opening is fitted with
mesh shaped burglar-proofing.
But the air that makes it into the cell is not enough
even to dissipate the smell of the sweat of 17 adults cramped together in a
small room with stinking mattresses and worn-out bedsheets that are hardly ever
washed.
To add to the mal-odourous smell, the remand prisoners
are locked in their cells for 14 long hours with a pot where they pass urine
and defecate. Each cell is given one or
two 5litre mayonnaise buckets they called ‘chamber pot’ that is placed inside
the cell next to the door. From 6pm to
8am daily, this is the pot the remand prisoners use for urine and faeces.
“No one was comfortable using the chamber pot because if
you happen to make noise [fart] while defecating, you feel ashamed,” said Emil
Touray, a former remand prisoner.
“Because of that,during my time in Remand I chose not to be
eating dinner so that I can avoid using the chamber pot at night. I know a lot of people who were not also
eating in the evening because they didn’t want to use the pot.”
But even if you don’t use the chamber pot, living with it
in the same small cell was a nightmare for the prisoners.
“The smell was very horrible in the cell at night,” Emil
lamented.
Remand and retained
Based on the laws of The Gambia, any offence whose
punishment is a sentence of death or life imprisonment is unbailable. Murder is punishable by death sentence only,
hence no bail. Other crimes such as
arson, treason, robbery, manslaughter, terrorism and rape carry a maximum
penalty of life imprisonment.
