The case was denounced by the National Union of the Prison Guard body and is being investigated by the Public Prosecution Service. The detainee, who suffers from psychiatric problems, had previously been hospitalized for setting fire to his cell.
A prisoner from the prison of Angra do Heroísmo, in the Azores, was admitted to the hospital after spending three days in a cell without clothes, denounced the president of the National Union of the Prison Guard body.
“He returned from the hospital when he was discharged and the director decided to put him in a cell alone, without clothes, only with two blankets and a bed without mattress,” the union president, Frederico Morais, told Lusa.
The news was advanced by CNN Portugal, which reveals that a complaint has already been filed with the prosecutor.
The prisoner, who will suffer from “a pathology of the psychiatric forum”, had discharged from the hospital, where he was hospitalized in intensive care after setting his cell in the middle of this month.
At the time, the fire forced another prisoner, with whom he shared cells, and five prison guards to receive hospital treatment.
At the time of the fire, Frederico Morais defended, in statements to Lusa, that the prisoner must have been “hospitalized in a unit specializing in psychiatry.”
However, when he was discharged, he returned to the prison and was placed in a cell alone, without clothes or mattress.
“The guards were outraged. They showered him, gave him to eat and put pressure on the nursing,” Frederico Morais said.
Despite the warnings of the guards, the prison director remained “irreducible,” the union president said.
According to Frederico Morais, the guards still arranged another blanket, but on the third day under these conditions the prisoner eventually had to be hospitalized in the intensive care of Terceira Island Hospital, with “hypothermia and insufficient heartbeat.”
Prison Services open inquiry
Prison services opened an inquiry into a case in which, allegedly, a prisoner in the Azores was isolated in a cell without mattress and required medical care in urgency, the Minister of Justice said today.
“There is a process of inquiry in and in the face of this will be taken the measures that are imposed,” said Rita Alarcão Judice at the end of the opening ceremony of the new facilities of the Southern PJ board of directors in Faro.
The prisoner has been hospitalized in serious condition since April 26, after being found in the cell where he was in confinement with signs of hypothermia.
