In a surprise visit to the Berman Prison in Jeddah last week, the National Human Rights Society (NHRS) found that four female inmates have AIDS, and two others suffer from Tuberculosis. She said the delegation was stunned to learn that King Saud Hospital in Jeddah had turned down repeated requests to conduct HIV tests for the female inmates, claiming that the test is too expensive. The NHRS's team, headed by Jawhara Al-Anqari, the Society's Deputy Chairman for Family Affairs, also found that there were Saudi women who were still in prison after they had completed their jail terms, because their families refused to receive them. Furthermore, the delegation found that all the prisoners were being kept in the same dormitories, regardless of age and crime records. “Such indiscriminate mingling has negative implications on the prisoners' attitudes and morals,” the Arabic daily Al-Watan quoted Anqari as saying. “All social studies have proven that young, impressionable prisoners can easily develop criminal tendencies under such conditions in the long run.” She said most of the inmates have expressed their dissatisfaction over the standards of the medical services at the facility, noting that the statistics given by the prison's management showed that there are about 800 women prisoners. Anqari said the delegation had noticed that the children of some inmates are staying with their mothers in the same dormitories. “This will affect the children, both behaviorally and psychologically,” she said. “This explains why many of these children deviate from the right path and become delinquents when they grow older.” One of the social workers at the facility told the delegation that most of the female prisoners who have children suffer a lot. They can't meet the basic requirements of their children because the financial aid they get from the management is too small to cover their children's expenses. Anqari said a female doctor looking after the inmates told the delegation that there were four female inmates with AIDS, one of them a Saudi. She further said there were no labor rooms in the prison's clinic or medical facilities for one–day surgeries, which are usually minor ones. She added that some inmates who had been indiscriminately arrested by the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice on charges of illegal actions stay in custody indefinitely, simply because the commission never gets around to pressing charges, and thus costing the government a lot of upkeep expenses in the process. __
