PSD to strengthen cooperation with civil society on human rights

AMMAN — Police Chief Maj. Gen. Ahmad Faqih on Wednesday stressed that the Public Security Department (PSD) will never tolerate any use of “unnecessary force” by its personnel when dealing with citizens.

 “I stress over and over when I meet with our police forces that I will never tolerate the use of unnecessary action.  No one at the PSD has the right to brutalise any citizen regardless of their rank or reason,” Faqih said.

His remarks came during a meeting at the PSD’s headquarters organised by human rights coordinator Basel Tarawneh and attended by diplomats, representatives from the local and international civil society, senators, deputies and lawyers.

“I can assure you that we have no torture incidents at our detention centres and if there ever was excessive use of violence, it was an individual incident. There are only five incidents of alleged police brutality currently being investigated,” the police chief told the gathering.

Faqih added that any individual who faces abuse by police is “more than welcome to file for complaints as we have a comprehensive justice system that deals with complaints against our forces and a police court that would investigate any complaint and try anyone who is found accountable”.

Regarding the Kingdom’s correctional facilities, the police chief said that the PSD is constantly upgrading its infrastructure and the services provided.

“Our 17 correctional facilities, including two for women, are overcrowded. They should hold up to 12,000 inmates but they’re now housing over 14,000.  Each inmate costs the PSD budget JD750 per month.  It is a big burden on us,” the police chief said.

Faqih said that the PSD is currently examining the possibility of allowing inmates to continue “their university education and is discussing the option with one of the Kingdom’s universities”.

The meeting aimed at discussing fruitful cooperation between the civil society and the PSD to strengthen the application of human rights and to ensure justice for all, Tarawneh told members of the gathering.

“The PSD has proved to have a transparent and open-door policy by holding regular meetings, while allowing us and other civil society organisations to visit detention and correctional centres without prior coordination,” he said, citing the 230 visits to detention facilities since the beginning of the year.

President of the Jordanian Women’s Union Amneh Zu’bi commended the meeting, saying it would “further boost the cooperation between the police and civil societies in Jordan”.

“We are going through many challenges and we should be open to building up real partnership with the police in order to protect the vulnerable people in our society,” Zu’bi said.

Meanwhile, head of the Freedom’s Committee at the Professional Unions Lawyer Walid Udwan said that many attorneys are still facing difficulties “in meeting with their clients after they are arrested”.

“Many lawyers are unable to attend the preliminary investigation procedures at the police stations,” he said.

Lawyer Samih Jarah also called on Faqih “to ensure enhanced training of police officers on how to deal with citizens in accordance with the international conventions”.

For her part, President of the General Federation of Jordanian Women Nuha Maaytah called on Faqih to consider the inmates’ classification.

“We hope that the PSD will ensure classification of prisoners according to their offences because there are some individuals with minor offences kept in the same cell as convicted murderers and other major offenders,” Maaytah said.

Faqih promised to take all comments into consideration and pledged to constantly work on improving prison facilities and other services provided by the PSD.

“We just call on our citizens to cooperate with us and abide by the law. Then, we will all find ourselves in a much better position,” Faqih concluded.