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Mauritania Islamist hunger strikers 'risking death': statement

By AFP
Mauritania This picture released by the Mauritanian news TV AMI on January 20, 2016 shows Cheikh Ould Saleck, a high-profile jihadist on death row over an Al-Qaeda assassination plot.  By  AMI  HOAFPFile
FEB 8, 2016 LISTEN
This picture released by the Mauritanian news TV (AMI) on January 20, 2016 shows Cheikh Ould Saleck, a high-profile jihadist on death row over an Al-Qaeda assassination plot. By (AMI / HO/AFP/File)

Nouakchott (AFP) - Dozens of Islamists on hunger strike at Mauritania's main jail said in a statement on Monday that some of the inmates were "in danger of death".

The 27 prisoners accused their jailers of "inflicting collective punishment against (ultra-conservative) Salafist prisoners after the escape of Cheikh Ould Saleck," a high-profile jihadist on death row over an Al-Qaeda assassination plot.

Ould Saleck escaped from jail on December 31, but was recaptured and sent back to Mauritania on January 20 after he crossed the Guinea-Bissau border into Guinea.

He has since been transferred to the Salaheddine prison in the north, where the most dangerous Islamists on death row are held, according to a Mauritanian security source.

"We have nothing to do with this jailbreak," said the inmates on hunger strike in the capital Nouakchott since January 11, demanding that they no longer be held responsible for the escape.

"Some hunger strikers are in danger of death and their situation is getting worse day by day," said the statement, whose signatories are accused of terrorist activities.

The prisoners said conditions in the jail were "unliveable", as they demanded that authorities allow family visits and medicines be supplied to those who need them.

Ould Saleck, 31, has been on death row since 2011 over an Al-Qaeda plot to assassinate the president.

Juan E. Mendez, the UN special rapporteur on torture, said last week during an official visit to Nouakchott that living conditions for detainees in the country were "inhumane".

"The legal safeguards against torture and ill-treatment are in place, but they don't work," he said.

"Facilities are overcrowded, inadequate -- as they are rarely purposely built -- unsanitary and insufficiently ventilated. There is effectively no access to health care and dental and psychiatric support is totally absent."

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