Jericho - prison camp or holiday camp ?

Zionist Organisation of America June 4th 2002 has an interesting report about the actual detention conditions and the monitors at Jericho prison.

Paul Martin, an investigative reporter for the Washington Times,
reported (June 4, 2002) after visiting the Jericho facility:


"Few guards and little more than a hedge confine Ahmed Saadat and five fellow prisoners to a Palestinian Authority jail under a U.S.-brokered deal five weeks ago...Imprisonment of the six men was to be supervised by the United States and Britain. But there was no sign of any Americans or Britons during a visit last week to the cluster of low, brown buildings [in Jericho]

...A few young men, towels slung over their shoulders, walked unconcerned through the
yard, separated from the main road into the city only by a few scattered bushes...

[They] later returned to unlocked cells...where a prison officer lay fast asleep, barefoot but uniformed, on a bed in his office.

"Mr. Saadat and [Fuad] Shoubaki [a senior PA official involved in the 'ship of terror'] appear to occupy the second floor of a wing in the prison described by a stenciled sign in English as 'General Security HQ.' No one answered when a reporter rang a bell next to the brown wooden door.

"The reporter then wandered around the building opening doors at random, without finding a single prisoner in his cell. Only three of the cells were locked."

Recent blogs on same topic here