JINHA

IZMIR – The Turkish state prosecutor in the city of Izmir released a statement denying claims of abuse of women and children in the notorious Şakran Prison.

The Şakran scandal started when Dicle News Agency reported that guards had held pregnant young women under the age of 18 in solitary confinement in the prison as a punishment. As delegations of opposition politicians and lawyers interviewed the children, it emerged that guards were implementing a system of abuse against prisoners through overcrowding, physical violence, handcuffing prisoners in broom closets, and denying health services to pregnant prisoners and prisoners with infants.

The Izmir Republican Prosecutor, in a statement, acknowledged that two juvenile prisoners (among ten prisoners under the age of 18 held in the prison) were indeed pregnant. They reported that the two pregnant prisoners had received all necessary medical attention since their arrest in late February. The statement also claimed that a third minor had said she was pregnant when she was arrested in March, but that tests at a prison hospital had disproved this.

The prosecutor claimed that one of the pregnant minors who complained about being held in solitary, B.K., was indeed held in "her own room," after she said that she was uncomfortable in the unit where she was housed. She was later returned to the children's barracks.

The prosecutor also denied that guards have formed a so-called "A Team" in charge of psychological punishment of prisoners.

(be/fk/cm)