Makhackala/Agency Caucasus – A joint prisoner rebellion against an official decision to relocate prisoners outside of Dagestan due to insufficient space in the country’s prisons brings the national administration face to face with its overpopulated prisons.
Authorities said that as prisoners have recently gone high up in number in Dagestan, some of them were relocated to provinces like Saratov, Tambov, Kirov and republics like Kalmik.
According to Muslim Dahayev, President of Dagestan’s Department of Correction, 11 prisoners hurt themselves on December 20 in protest against their relocation to Prison Nr. 33 in Saratov Province. The prisoners hurt themselves only because they asked to be sent back to the prison in their hometown, authorities said. Gamzat Ullubiyev, another official at the Department of Correction, linked the cause for this kind of a situation to immigration: "At the time of Soviet Union, prisons were constructed according to the then statistical information; however, the last 20 years saw a huge increase in immigration and led to evacuation from some prisons on the one hand and overcrowding in some prisons on the other hand."KU/ÖZ/FT
