Africa-Press – Angola. Three thousand and 525 cases of excessive pre-trial detention were registered from January to April this year, throughout the national territory, compared to two thousand and 971 last year, said this Monday, in Luanda, deputy prison commissioner Emílio Manuel Tomás.
The data was presented during the 20th meeting of the “ad hoc” commission to analyze the excess of preventive detention in the country, with the official highlighting that the penal population currently stands at 24,303 inmates, compared to 23,888 the previous year.
According to the official, of this number, 11 thousand 963 are in preventive detention in the preparatory instruction phase, two thousand 524 in the judicial process phase, one thousand and one cases, 20 under security measures and 12 thousand 330 convicted.
Emílio Tomás also said that more than six thousand cases have not been issued with a sentence across the country.
For his part, the commission’s secretary, Alves René, stated that this is a serious matter, hence the creation of the multidisciplinary commission to mitigate the phenomenon of excessive pre-trial detention in the country.
“We have just received the raw data, so we will check by interacting with all affected bodies, cross-checking data so that at the next meeting we can present exact data on whether or not these cases of excessive pre-trial detention exist”, he stressed.
He clarified that normally, when the statistics arrive, cases tend to be high, but later, with the work of the technical committee, they eventually decrease.
He said that this data is fundamentally collected during verification visits to the penitentiary service in isolation by the various bodies that are part of the commission, but that time and again this information, for a number of reasons, is not the most assertive possible.
He made it known that there are currently no defendants serving an excess sentence of more than five years in pre-trial detention, as the few cases registered were dealt with promptly.
He also highlighted that Luanda has a greater number of cases, potentially involving excessive preventive detention, due to the fact that it holds a greater number of defendants and it is natural that they appear in greater preponderance.
Alves René said that the impact of the commission has had a positive impact, taking into account that before its creation, there were not only cases of preventive detention, but also prisoners who remained in penitentiary services beyond the sentences actually imposed.
He admitted that the bodies that intervene in the justice sector are experiencing various difficulties, including lack of staff and transportation, but that does not exclusively define the phenomenon of preventive detention.
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