UN expert urges US to end 'torture' of prisoner

[Bilal Mahmud المكافح المخلص]

“Keeping Albert Woodfox in solitary confinement for more than four decades clearly amounts to torture and it should be

lifted immediately,” said the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan E. Méndez.

Méndez added that he is deeply concerned about the health of Albert Woodfox.

Another prisoner, Herman Wallace, who had been accused of assisting Woodfox in the alleged murder, was freed on Tuesday after a US federal judge overturned his conviction, saying his 1974 trial had been “unconstitutional.”

Wallace, 71, died the day after, on October 2, battling cancer, having spent 41 years in solitary confinement.

Woodfox, Wallace, and another prisoner, who was also involved in the case, had denied the conviction, saying they had been set up because they had founded a chapter of the Black Panthers at Angola.

“This is a sad case and it is not over,” said Méndez. “The co-accused, Woodfox, remains in solitary confinement pending an appeal to the federal court and has been kept in isolation in an 8-foot-by-12 foot cell for up to 23 hours per day, with just one hour of exercise or solitary recreation.”

“The circumstances of the incarceration of the so-called 'Angola Three' clearly show that the use of solitary confinement in the US penitentiary system goes far beyond what is acceptable under international human rights law,” the UN official said.

Referring to the negative effects of solitary confinement, Mendez said, the "persons held in solitary confinement should always be allowed to challenge the reasons and the length of the regime, and should always have access to legal counsel and medical assistance.”

The special rapporteur has several times urged US authorities to abolish the use of prolonged or indefinite solitary confinement, and requested a permit from the US to visit prisons in California. But he has not yet received a positive answer.

AN/ARA