Prisoners Tortured, Rights Group Says

Turkish prisoners transferred to new small-cell jails were tortured and kept in isolation for long periods, a human rights group said Saturday. Turkey denied the charges.

Amnesty International made its accusation just weeks after Turkish security forces launched a crackdown on jails across the country to try to end hunger strikes by prisoners protesting plans to transfer them from large dormitories to small cells.

At least 30 prisoners and two police officers died in the raids. Authorities say the prisoners who died set themselves on fire rather than end their protest, and the Justice Ministry issued a statement denying that torture was used in the raids.

The ministry also published what it said was a letter from the brother of an inmate who died in the raids blaming leftist organizations in the jails for the death of his sibling. The ministry did not give the name or the gender of the inmate.

Turkey says the new jails will be easier to control than the dormitories, which were often off limits to wardens and run by political groups or criminal gangs. But the protesters say they will be more vulnerable to abuse in the small cells, where there are no witnesses to see how they are treated.