Outlawed, Cellphones Are Thriving in Prisons

Palestinians on Sunday called for an international investigation of Israel’s treatment of detained Palestinians after a 30-year-old Palestinian died in custody and a hunger strike by four other inmates sparked a week of West Bank protests. The death of Arafat Jaradat set off more clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian stone-throwers in several areas of the West Bank on Sunday. In one incident, two Palestinians were wounded by army fire, including a 15-year-old boy who was shot in the chest, a Palestinian health official said.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — Military officials on Tuesday described prison conditions in the weeks leading up to a raid Saturday as chaotic, with detainees breaking rules with impunity, blocking cameras and windows, shouting at guards, splashing them with urine and poking sticks at them through the fencing.

More than half of the remaining detainees at Guantánamo Bay are now on a hunger strike, US military officials confirmed Sunday. Of the 166 inmates at the controversial detention camp in Cuba, 84 are refusing all food as a protest against their indefinite confinement and conditions at the centre.

In several men’s prisons across California, colored signs hang above cell doors: blue for black inmates, white for white, red, green or pink for Hispanic, yellow for everyone else.

Fifty inmates at the central prison in the city of Amara in southern Iraq have began a hunger strike, claiming they had made confessions under torture and should be freed, a lawmaker said on Saturday.Mushraq Naji, a member of parliament's legal affairs committee, told AFP that the inmates began their hunger strike on Friday."The prisoners told us they had made confessions under torture and demanded they be freed," Naji said, adding he had visited the prison Saturday together with another MP and several ministers.

By Herr Hansa :We now have access to more information in the last three decades than has been accessible in the previous 5000 years. In some areas of the developed world there are more televisions than households. The internet has become our main source of information. Smartphones allow us access to all forms of mass media and information anytime and anyplace we want. Clearly we are bombarded by information and messages, though few are relevant.

A group of Iranian political prisoners ended a two-week hunger strike in Evin prison protesting against their treatment by jailors, an opposition website reported on Tuesday.The group said in a statement carried by the website of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi that they were ending the strike in response to calls by Mousavi and other opposition figures."We hope the Tehran prosecutor and other officials make good on their promises... and deal with offending wardens who have insulted the prisoners" they said in the statement dated August 9 on Kaleme.com.