United States
USA: freedom after more than 40 years of solitary confinement
A cell with only five square meters, it was limited for decades, the range of motion of Albert Woodfox in a US prison. Now was the convicted murderer being released.
Woodfox, after his release from prison
It was the longest solitary confinement and on a surface of only 2,70 times 1.80 meters, a prisoner, ever in a prison in the United States sitting had to. Woodfox is on Friday afternoon from the prison near the city of Baton Rouge in the state of Louisiana have been released. The day of the release was also the 69. Birthday of the prisoner.
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In the history of the United States was no other human being so long in solitary confinement as Woodfox. He belonged to the so-called “Angola Three”. This was a group of three inmates in the state prison of Louisiana, the so-called “Angola Prison”, and other prisons for decades, in solitary confinement, sat. The prison authorities justified the order that the activists of the Black Panther movement, otherwise the other prisoners, abetted would have. The Black Panther party fought since the mid-1960’s-years for equality and against racial discrimination in the United States.
Woodfox was already armed rape, and assault in prison, in 1972, when he was supposed to have a guard murdered. He himself protested to the last his innocence, but was sentenced to life in prison. But the case was among other things due to racism allegations against the jury reopened. The most important Belastungszeuge, a convicted to death Serienvergewaltiger, died shortly before the second procedure.
Woodfox stood several times before a release. Last June ordered by a district court and under a third procedure, because – so the reason – more than 40 years after the fact, not a fair process was possible. An appeals court overturned this decision again and ordered a new trial.
The last of the “Angola Three,”
The other two of the “Angola Three” were Robert King, 2001, was released after his conviction for the murder of a fellow prisoner tipped had been, and Herman Wallace. He was also due to the murder of the caretaker has been convicted, and died in October of 2013, just a few days after its release.
The conditions of detention in the tiny cells, referred to human rights organisations again and again as inhumane. The prison in the vicinity of Baton Rouge is in the USA notorious and helps in the vernacular name as “Blutigstes prison in America” and “Alcatraz of the South”. Again and again there were violent incidents between prisoners, often with fatal results.
qu /rb (dpa, APE, rtre, afpe)