Rights-abuse inquiry

Press, 20 July 1987, Page 10

Rights-abuse inquiry

NZPA-Reuter Panama City President Eric Arturo Delvalle has ordered an investigation of alleged human rights abuses in a Panama City prison, where hundreds of antiGovernment protesters were held recently. Panama’s Catholic Church has described conditions at Modelo prison as “deplorable" and an “insult to human dignity” and a student who spent three days there told this week of torture, beatings and rape. A communique from the Presidential press office said Mr Delvalle called for an investigation of alleged prison abuses in a letter sent yesterday to General Manuel Antonio Noriega, chief of Panama’s 20,000-man police and military forces.

Mr Delvalle noted that several people have complained of “innumerable mistreatments and abuses” during their confinement at Modelo, the communique said. Most of 300 people arrested when security forces broke up an antiGovernment rally here on July 10 were sent the

prison, located near military headquarters in the tough Chorrillo district of Panama City. The protesters spent three nights at Modelo before being released under a Presidential decree granting amnesty to all political prisoners. One of them, Alexis Rios, aged 21, a law student, told Reuters in an interview that many protesters were arbitrarily beaten by guards and inmates. “We were tortured both physically and psychologically,” Mr Rios said. He said he saw one protester knocked unconscious by a prison guard and kicked in the stomach by another. Mr Rios said another protester, a university student, was raped 30 times by inmates while guards ignored his repeated screams and cries for help. Mr Rios said he had been told he would “disappear” or'be sent to Coiba, a penal colony off Panama’s Pacific coast, if he spoke about conditions inside Modelo after he was released.