BOSNIA: HUNGER STRIKER’S LETTER: "This centre has become the shame of Europe"

Hello,

We have tried to contact your organization by phone to give details on our adventure or may be more our misadventure. Unfortunately, the authorities of the detention centre have dropped the volume and even more, they finally have cut the line.

We are nine persons: five Palestinians, two Algerians and two Tunisians.
Coming from Montenegro, we crossed the border of Bosnia Herzegovina irregularly. We have been arrested six months ago by the border police. They took the money of some of us and then they took us to the detention centre in East Sarajevo without getting an interview and seeing a judge, a lawyer, a translator for five months.

When we ask about our lot, they beat us. Some of us have been theirs ribs broken, and have been forced to slash one’s wrists in order to draw attention.

Despite that, nobody comes to our aides.

On the 25th of December 201; we have decided to begin a hunger strike with no limits to denounce:

1. The long length of our imprisonment without knowing the cause.

2. Our ignorance of the Bosnian language and the lack of translator.

3. We did not see a judge in order to know the reasons of our imprisonment.

4. Our ignorance of our rights and the lack of legal aid.

5. Mistreatment and violence from the detention centre’s staff.

6. We have been subjected to questioning by the intelligence service (Ministry of Security). Questions were about terrorism.

7. Finally, we do not know how it is going to end.

We are not only nine in the centre. There are people imprisoned for more than two years, under pretence that struggle against terrorism. They are not released, not judged. This centre has become the shame of Europe. It is even called Auschwitz and Guantanomo.

We, signatories of this letter, we would like the dissemination of this information, everywhere in order to help us.

Abou AHMED, Mouhamed ALI, Mohsen ARAFAT, Mouhamed BEN IBRAHIM, Abd ELRAHMANE, Kadari KALIFA, Mohammed Ali KENOUCHE, Kahlaoui SABER, Yet SMAIL.

Lukavica’s camp, 12/02/2011

(Enclosed, an anonymous testimony from another detainee of the Lukavica’s camp)