AT least 19 inmates died and six were injured when a blaze started by prisoners who torched their mattresses ripped through the Serkadji prison in the Algerian capital, state television said on Wednesday, quoting Justice Minister Ahmed Ouyahia.
Angry and shocked relatives of the prisoners besieged the gates of the prison on Wednesday morning, many of them wailing women demanding news of their loved ones inside.
Witnesses told Algeria’s APS news agency that the fire started on Tuesday when prisoners set fire to their mattresses after an incident between a prison guard and a young detainee who had tried to commit suicide.
Inmates in other cells also set their bedding alight, and the blaze spread rapidly, sending a pall of thick, black smoke into the sky above the seething Casbah neighbourhood of narrow alleyways in the heart of the Algerian capital.
Young police officers standing guard outside the prison on Wednesday morning were unable to stop the angry women reaching the entrance, many of them in tears and hurling insults.
”Tell me where my son is,” screamed a distressed middle-aged mother. ”Open this door that I can see him.”
Policemen, themselves visibly distressed, tried in vain to reason with the crowd, telling them they did not know what was happening behind the high walls, and that the prison authorities would have to provide the answers.
One person in the crowd blamed the authorities for allowing matches and lighters inside, and another who claimed to have served time behind the high walls said the place was corrupt. ”If you have money you can get anything, even drugs,” he said.
In February 1994, about 100 Islamist inmates were killed at Serkadji prison when the authorities cracked down on a mutiny.
Last month, at another prison, 22 inmates were injured when a prisoner started a fire in a cell designed to hold 15 inmates, but in which 42 were held.
More than 100 of the nation’s 145 prisons were built over a century ago, and with a prison population currently estimated at 42 000, the tolls are frequently high in such incidents. – Sapa